Friends & Lovers
by rhyejess
Summary: Modern AU!AU with a stached!JackOC pairing, working its way back to JE of course. This story is actually complete, but it may take me forever to upload all the chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** These characters are based on those by Annie Proulx, and I'm not making money from them.

**Introduction:** The year? Now. The place? Prince George's County, Maryland, USA. It's a place where urban meets rural, affluent meets poor, being white puts you in the racial minority, and you're more afraid of claiming to be Republican than gay. You root for the Skins not the Ravens, but the O's not the Nationals, and your idea of professional basketball is the Maryland Terrapins, not the Washington Wizards. You don't drink microbrews, and you live less than three blocks from a McDonald's.

About a year ago, Jack Twist finally said goodbye to his closeted high-school-fling turned 20-year-love. Their relationship was going nowhere very quickly, and Jack needed more. What he got was tall, thin, intelligent Ed, who's not afraid of gasp being in love with a man. But, like a drug, he finds he can't quite function in a life without Ennis. He's drawn back towards the man who's been his rock for over two decades. Ennis already lost the love of his life; he's not about to pass up or jeopardize a friendship with Jack. Turn on the sexual tension, and you have yourself a fic.

And yes, it ends with Jack and Ennis forever, just like all things should happy sigh.

**AN:** Thanks to **wannabebrit** for the beta! I know about now you all must be thinking I don't sleep or something. And that'd make you very perceptive because it's true. This is a complete story and all chapters can be found on my livejournal, but it may take me a while to get them all uploaded here. There are 18 chapters, and there will be a sequel.

* * *

Chapter 1

Jack was frowning down at his Wheat Thins.

"He, is he um... attractive?" Ennis asked, because taking an interest in Jack's love life made something light up inside Jack, something that seemed to need lighting.

Jack shrugged. "He's... yeah, he's..." Jack chuckled, shook his head, and popped some Wheat Thins in his mouth.

"Well, when do I get to meet him?"

Jack swallowed prematurely, pain of unchewed Wheat Thins written in his still-chiseled middle-aged features. "You don't have to do this, Ennis."

"I'm just trying to take some interest..."

Jack sighed. "I know what you're trying to do, and it ain't helping."

"Sorry." Ennis let the hurt register in his voice.

"No, I'm sorry. I..." Jack rose, downed the last of the beer bottle, and headed for the coat closet.

"Where you going?"

"Look, I'm tired. Had a bad day at work today, and I was hoping to just sit with my best friend and watch a little of a bowl game, but I can see I was a fool."

"Jack. I ain't trying to rub anything in. Just trying to... trying to be ok with this thing, alright?"

"Ennis." Jack rubbed a hand over his forehead and eyes, scratching it through his mustache. "Ennis, I know. And it's just amazing. A little too amazing for me. You might not be trying to rub anything in, but you're making me feel about as guilty as can be, like I'm the one rubbing..."

"Jack, just sit back down. I'll get you another beer."

"I can't take this. Making you... in your own home, trying..." Ennis was in the kitchen now, though, burying himself in the fridge. "Ennis, you got to know I'm not trying to hurt you."

"If I thought you were trying to hurt me, I wouldn't be getting you another beer. Just sit back down."

Jack sighed and obeyed.

It was true. This was hard for Ennis. Hard to hear about Jack's new... man friend. Ed. Ennis tried not to think too hard about it, because it made him pretty sick pretty quickly. He wasn't a fool, and he'd known his times apart from Jack were filled with more than just some jerking off. Jack always returned to him a little more knowledgeable. He thought he could be alright with that, because at the end there was them. But there never really had been them. Even after his divorce, after he moved into this one-bedroom apartment in the shit part of Laurel, just a janitor at a local high school... Even then he didn't want Jack to be a real part of that one bedroom. Jack'd spent more than his share of nights there, that was true. The living room still bore marks of his stay in that house. Jack'd bought a decent leather armchair that still stood guardian over all that had been Jack and Ennis, for the twenty three years there had been a Jack and Ennis. That last argument, though, had been the worst, and even Ennis knew he'd screwed up bad. When Jack'd come with a duffel to pack up his belongings, well... Ennis knew Jack would move on. Jack wasn't a loner. He had been raised a loner, divorced his wife young and forced into being a loner, forced further yet by Ennis. But Jack'd made friends at work. He went to D.C. every once in a while and enjoyed the nightlife there. Ennis? Ennis just worried about school maintenance. One time, he'd gone to Laurel Mall alone and picked up an ice cream cone from the second floor shop where he used to take his daughters when they weren't even waist-high. They didn't have no time for him anymore, either. Just like Jack.

Once, he'd had what every dad wanted. He'd always been a high school janitor. Hadn't graduated from high school himself, so he gathered he was lucky to have even that. He and Alma had had a nice, cozy little two-bedroom in a more upstanding part of Laurel. She'd wanted to save up to buy their own house in a lovely subdivision, maybe someplace like Bowie or Glendale. Well, she'd got it alright. Somewhere out in Gaithersburg, where Ennis didn't hardly want to drive if his life depended on it. He'd never been fond of the Beltway, didn't trust having so many cars so close. She'd divorced him and married Brad, and Brad had money, a six-bedroom, a three-car garage, and Bichon Frise named Puffball.

Alma, forever the Home Ec teacher, had gone from teaching Home Ec at Laurel High School, where cops had to patrol the halls and the teachers were paid in whatever leftover pennies the P.G. County government could scrounge together, like everywhere else in the piss-poor county, to teaching at Quince Orchard. Ennis had been in the P.G. County School System long enough to feel a ping of hatred and betrayal. Bad enough his wife had left him for another man and took his daughters to Montgomery County, but did she have to turn traitor and work for their fucking rich school system, too?

So here he was. His secret lover for almost more years than he could remember, since high school, had left him for Ed. Nice, handsome, tall, out-of-the-closet Ed. His wife of twenty years had left him for Brad. Nice, rich, Presbyterian-choir-directing Brad. His oldest, Junior, was at Towson State. His youngest, Jenny, was too preoccupied with school plays and musicals to have time for him any more. Plus, his doctor said he had high blood pressure, so now he couldn't even have a fucking steak. Most days Ennis just came home from work, drank a beer or eight, and passed out in bed.

But more and more frequently, he'd come home to find Jack in the leather armchair, beer in hand. The first time had been three months ago, almost a full year since he'd last seen Jack. The sight of him had made all of Ennis's emotions swim and cry out for release, but he'd just stood, mouth-agape in his own doorway, afraid that any sudden movements would scare off the object of all his desires.

Jack had set the terms this time. They were just friends. Jack and Ed were having some trouble. Jack needed someplace he could go to get away from Ed, and he didn't know where else to be. He still had a key. Ennis hadn't wanted to take it away; it stood as a silent talisman of his hope, knowing his key was still in Jack's pocket or junk drawer or wherever, that Jack could always come back. He'd said as much to Jack when they'd met to break up slightly more peacefully. Ennis knew he'd overstepped every bound he owned during their last fight together, blasting with canons roaring into the shooting zone. But at the last he'd told Jack true, use the key anytime, come back any time, I'll listen to whatever you want me to hear.

So he'd heard about Ed. He'd heard about Ed and his work schedule, how Ed didn't like having dinner parties and Jack did, how Ed didn't want a dog and Jack did. He hadn't said much. Hearing all about what Ed and Jack had was killing him inside, but simply having Jack in his life, even if they were just friends, was more light and hope than he'd ever thought to see again. He'd already had and lost Jack as a lover. If he lost Jack now as a friend... Ennis had never been a careful man, but that would be carelessness unforgivable.

Ennis plopped back down on the couch.

Jack smiled over at him from the arm chair. The smile was genuine, real and warming, and after twenty three years together, he could read Jack's expressions. God he wanted to touch that man, but he didn't dare, didn't dare. He held out the beer to Jack, and released the bottle a little too late, long enough for fingers to brush fingers. It was intentional, and Jack knew, but didn't say anything.

Minutes passed until the next commercial break, and Jack turned his voice, but not his eyes, to Ennis. "I'm real sorry that bitching about Ed is the only reason I ever come over. I missed you."

Jack turned his head then, meeting Ennis's eyes, causing Ennis to flinch and look away before his own eyes betrayed too much. "I missed you, Ennis. You know it never would have worked out between us, not really, but... damn. You're like... like fertilizer or something. I can survive without you, but I need you around if I'm gonna flourish. Don't know why I didn't see that before. I'm real glad we can be friends."

Ennis nodded, a choked "yup" escaping his lips.

"Wasn't sure this'd work, but... But dammit, you been my best friend over half my life. You know Ed doesn't even like football? And he drinks those fancy micro brews." Jack swallowed a mouthful of MGD and made a refreshed, gasping sound, like in those TV commercials. "Ed? He's jealous as anything. Tell you that. He... I guess he has a lot of me, but some parts he won't ever know, and he begrudges you them, you know he does, Ennis."

"Jack," Ennis spoke quickly before his guts left him. He spoke sincerely, his heart flopping out, pulling between his teeth grating against his soul to speak these words, but he needed to know. "You really happy with him?"

Jack's eyes found Ennis's again, before they lit up, his smile soft and familiar and the usual one he gave while inviting a kiss, though Ennis guessed that wasn't its meaning this time, wouldn't ever be its meaning again. A lot of the old forms of communication between them had been physical, but this new relationship-- it made Ennis work out new forms, new ways to understand Jack, new ways to see Jack's meaning. The smile didn't mean "kiss me." Probably it never had. It meant something else, something that got interpreted as "kiss me" in the days when that was alright. Whatever it mean, it made Ennis blush and look down at his clenched hands in his lap.

"Yeah, I am." Jack rattled the Wheat Thin box. There weren't many left. "Just one question, Ennis. Do you... Ah shit, never mind. It's a stupid question anyway."

Ennis though he knew what Jack wanted to ask. And yeah, there'd been a time when it would have been a stupid question for sure, but those days were dropping behind him like skin from a snake, as he twisted and writhed in his confining, lonely life. Jack wouldn't want to ask it. It'd jeopardize everything they had now.

Ennis wanted to call words to his mouth, to say "God yes, Jack. Anything, Jack. Leave Ed, move in with me, I'll try and find a better paying job, maybe take the opening at Blair, we'll buy a house, someplace nice, have our own garage, two cars for two men who both own cars, and we'll have people over whenever you want, and a dog, too, and you can bitch to Ed about me, I just need you back, need your light back in my life, 'cause if I fertilize you, you water me entirely and I'm just about to die without you."

But it occurred to him that maybe Jack had been planning on asking something else. Like maybe if he had more Wheat Thins. And his voice caught in his throat like a sob. He didn't dare risk the once-or-twice weekly presence Jack was in his life. It was too much, too much to gamble with. The despair that overtook Ennis then was horrible, like when his mom died. He felt so utterly alone. There'd always been this one person he'd shared every last thought with, but at last there were thoughts he couldn't share with Jack. All because he'd said some things over the years, things he'd thought, for sure, but things he should have kept to himself. Maybe he should keep this one to himself, too.

They drank and watched the game, not cheering for either team in particular until one came out far ahead. Jack always cheered for an underdog, and Ennis always cheered against Jack, just 'cause it was more fun that way.

Out of Wheat Thins and football, Jack rose once again to grab his coat. He hovered a moment at the door, Ennis pondering the the appropriateness of a hug, and seeing that same question reflected in Jack's careless gaze. The question hung between them until Jack was strong, for it was Jack who had reason to be strong now, and he blew out a hard breath, saying, "Night, Ennis. Take care. Had fun. See you soon."

Jack loped out into the mild winter air, his breath leading him. Ennis watched him all the way to his car before shutting the door and returning to the bedroom for the only intimacy he got any more, and needing it as much as anything from having Jack's scent still lingering in the apartment.

He didn't know how much longer he could do this. It was killing him to see Jack and not have him, but it had killed him more to not see him and not have him. He'd die eventually of not being able to hold Jack against himself. He knew that. He hoped to at least give Jack some peace this way.

He slipped off to sleep, but his dreams weren't good. They never had been, but they stretched to disproportions now, filled with Ed in all shapes and sizes. For a man he'd never met, Ed haunted his every hour, changed the taste of all his food, dragged the warm apartment air cold over his skin. For tonight, in his own warm home, Jack was warmed by Ed, and it seemed that all that warm that went to Jack was stolen from Ennis still, and at the last.

But Ennis loved Jack, loved him bad. There wasn't a way to hide that any more. Ennis needed to know Jack was happy, and he guessed Jack was happier in the nice townhouse he had in Columbia, with someone who deserved his love and kindness and generosity, someone with a college degree and a proper job.

Maybe, somewhere deep down inside, he even thought his suffering proved to himself how badly he loved, how much he was willing to give of himself. And it was that confirmation that drove him through to the next day. For once in his life, Ennis could look in the mirror and see someone who was giving everyone he loved everything they needed.

* * *

Jack dragged his frame back through the doors of his townhouse. The lights were all off except for the modest chandelier over the kitchen table. Ed was in bed. It was for the best. They probably would have just argued a bit or something. Ed wasn't too fond of Jack's growing habit of seeing Ennis. Ed had a lot of habits Jack wasn't too fond of, though, so he guessed it evened out a bit. 

Work had been hell today. His boss yelled at him, and he'd had to fire Gary, even knowing his wife was pregnant with their second child. The man had taken it in stride, happy just to be paid for his saved-up vacation time. Gary was a good guy, and a good accountant, but downsizing was downsizing, and he wasn't a star accountant by any measure. It'd had to be somebody, and Jack was glad he wasn't in charge of the decision.

After getting off work, though, the only thing he could think of was seeing Ennis, so he'd stopped at a 7-11 for some snacks and let himself into the familiar apartment, bringing back so many memories. There wasn't hardly a place there they hadn't had sex, and Jack couldn't deny the animal attraction between them was still as strong as ever. Ennis had pulled a stunt tonight with a beer bottle that'd nearly landed him on his back on the worn-bare carpeting. But Jack was trying to make this thing work with Ed. If he really wanted to make it work, he guessed he should say goodbye to Ennis for good. He'd tried that. Gone a whole year without him. Somehow it'd been worse than the four years he'd been away at college while Ennis was marrying and having baby girls. Maybe because now his hope was gone, blown away like so much dust on a windy day.

And yes, when he'd had a hard day, a beer next to Ed had the ability to cheer him... but Ed wasn't Ennis. Every night he returned from Ennis's, he vowed to stay away, knew he was playing with fire. But Ennis was being careful too. He was trying so damn hard to stay within Jack's lines. So hard, in fact, that Jack might have thought that Ennis preferred those lines...

If he hadn't played that stunt with the beer bottle, that is. But he had. Ennis was pushing the lines, blurring them just enough, pressing a big finger into the chalkiness of them and swiping his hand this way and that. Visualizing Ennis's thumb and its movements was not, it turned out, a great way to remember he was just a friend, and Jack dropped his head down to the kitchen table.

Why was he with Ed anyway? They had so much in common. They were both middle managers in nice, shiny office buildings. They were downtown some Saturdays, sometimes jogging through Rock Creek Park, visiting their friends John and Foster in their posh little condo in Adam's Morgan, showering there, going out on the town at night. It was the life, and Jack loved it.

But for some reason he preferred to spend time with Ed when John and Foster, or Scott from work, or Ed's friends Betty and Todd were around. Ed was a great date. The perfect date. He did with Jack all the things... all the things Jack had always wanted to do with Ennis. Jack laid his forehead against the cool marble surface of the table.

Still, if Jack broke up with Ed, it would be admitting defeat. He'd never find another guy that fit him quite so well without being Ennis. If he couldn't make it work with Ed, he couldn't make it work at all, and he was lost for all time in the land called Ennis del Mar.

Jack chuckled, realizing Ennis's name meant island in the sea, and seeing that he might be forever stranded on that desert island without the strength in his bones to pull that island up onto any continent. He could not let that happen.

Leaving these thoughts for a more wakeful time, he pushed himself to his feet. Jack changed into maroon satin pajamas, crawled into bed, and pressed his cold feet up against Ed's calves. He got an answering snuggle, and Jack knew that, for another day, all was well between himself an Ed. He wasn't sure for how long, but for now it was so. And for now was all that mattered right now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** These characters are based on those by Annie Proulx, and I'm not making money from them.

**AN:** Thanks to **wannabebrit** for the beta.

* * *

Chapter 2

Jack threw his head back and busted a gut to the _The Devil's Right Hand_. It was on WMZQ, but they were playing more and more of that rock-pop-country that Jack didn't like much. Ed hated country, and that was something Jack loved about Ed. Jack used to hate it himself, back when he was just a kid, crazy to be anywhere but Frederick, Hicktown, U.S.A.

He'd been sixteen when Ennis had showed him what was what in the backseat of a sky blue Chevy Celebrity. That same country song'd been playing on that radio too-- Steve Earle singing about a gun going off. Jack had been a sucker for country since that day. So much so that even being stuck in traffic on the BW Parkway, takeout Chinese growing cold in the passenger seat, could not ruin his mood.

Staring at the sea of taillights after the song had ended, Jack fumbled for his cell phone, hit #1 on the speed dial, and waited patiently for the other party to pick up.

"Hello?"

"Hey there sweet cakes." Jack smiled at his own stupidity.

"Jack. Listen, we are up over our heads here. I am not going to be home any time soon."

"Shit." Though that wasn't terribly new, for Ed.

"Yeah. Sorry. So sorry. I know you were planning Chinese."

Jack eyed the brown bag sitting in the passenger seat, the bill stapled to the top like a flag. "It's alright." But he knew it really was alright, since he changed lanes that very moment, angling towards the nearby exit-- 197 North into Laurel.

"I'll be home maybe nine? I hate this, I really do..."

Jack could hear genuine stress and sadness in Ed's voice, yanking him back to the here and now. "Yeah... I know," he sighed. "It sucks. I'll see you later."

"Yeah..."

"You'll be ok."

"Yeah I know..."

"I gotta go. Driving. Love you."

"Bye."

"Bye."

Jack didn't even bother dialing the other number he had on his mind. He dropped the cell phone into his jacket pocket, trying not to be the little bit angry he was feeling. Ed was always working late. If anyone asked Jack to work late, he'd throw a 'fuck you' over his shoulder and head home, but he was different than Ed.

Jack never called, Jack never knocked, but Jack always did spend a good ten minutes fumbling with the keys before swinging open the door to Ennis's apartment. He usually beat Ennis home, delighting in that little moment of surprise when Ennis walked through the door, the sparkling instant when he and Ennis could pretend, just for a second, that they weren't just friends.

He swung the door open, and came face to face with a grimy man gaping at him from the hallway. Ennis clearly had not been home for more than ten minutes, as he had not changed out of his work uniform. They starred at each other for a minute, this tiny role-reversal somehow a major hitch in their routine.

"I brought Chinese. I know you don't like orange beef, but I thought you ought to give it a try."

Ennis stared at him.

"What do you say. Somethin' new?"

"Ed liked orange chicken I guess?"

Jack's cover was blown. Jack heaved a sigh. "Yeah, an' he's workin' late tonight. Unexpectedly. Again."

Ennis opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again and shrugged. "Make yourself at home," he answered, though Jack swore he could detect a hint of irony in the sentence. "I need to shower, though," Ennis continued.

Jack nodded, and started unpacking the Chinese food.

* * *

Ennis felt a little something rise in his throat the moment Jack busted through his door. It was an odd mix only this man brought: acid, adrenaline, and tears of all kinds. But now for the first time he noticed that something'd been added. It'd been there, rising like a storm cloud on the horizon. Weather-eyed, he should have seen it. But he hadn't been watching to see.

It was anger-- anger at Jack. Jack could still bust into Ennis's place without knocking or calling, bringing dinner but nothing else, and no promise of anything else either. Jack just assumed Ennis didn't have anyone, wasn't going anywhere, wasn't planning anything. The fact that Jack knew Ennis well enough to know the sure-fire safety of those assumptions only made Ennis madder.

He gathered up all his mad, gathered it up in his head and wanted to have it out. He wanted Jack to hear what Ennis was feeling, the conversations that had been running over and over in his head, but he didn't want to acknowledge the part of himself that was getting desperate enough to edge on begging Jack to listen, and he could never risk letting his anger loose on Jack. The result was that he was learning for the first time ever in his life to control it, that anger. Feeling his control slip, he said something about a quick shower, removing himself from the situation, and walked to bathroom.

He stood under the hot deluge just long enough to burn away the inside pain with outside scalding. He needed to stop being a jerk. Isn't that what Jack'd called him during that last fight?

This was not a good time for Ennis to think back on that. There was food getting cold. Ennis had said so much he didn't mean, but he bet Jack meant every word he'd said. Ennis jerked off the water hard and dressed in a hurry, back into his dirty clothes before leaving the bathroom. It was not his ordinary procedure, and Jack would know it, but this is how things were between them. Friends don't walk out of the bathroom naked in front of each other.

When he returned the table was set, the food was out. They ate in comfortable silence, and Ennis had to admit that, while spicier than he liked, the orange beef weren't half bad. And when it started to burn his mouth, Jack seemed to notice without him saying and swapped it out for Jack's own beef with broccoli. Jack always had kept one eye open for Ennis's discomfort.

* * *

Ennis ate alone when he could, but he often had to eat with the rest of the building maintenance crew in the winter. Luckily, Monday, some girl had gone and spewed in the main office. This wasn't usually the sort of thing Ennis had to deal with, since his main job was with the cooling and heating, but he supposed it said something about him that he would rather deal with vomit than have to sit and eat with the people he worked with.

He was just finishing up in the office when a familiar voice pricked his ears. "I didn't start it."

It sounded just like Jack when he'd been in high school, and Ennis whipped his head around to see a vice principal writing out a demerit slip for some kid. Ennis was just shaking the voice out of his head when the vice principal began speaking.

"I don't care if it's only your second week here, Robbie, fisticuffs are not acceptable at Laurel."

"It's Bobby," the boy huffed.

Ennis had finished his clean-up but he didn't move from his spot. There was no mistake. The last time he'd seen Bobby, Bobby'd been about twelve, but he'd been living in Massachusetts at the time, visiting Jack from there.

Bobby'd stayed with Jack two weeks in the summer and some holidays ever since Jack and Lureen divorced what seemed like eons ago, when Bobby was just a little baby. Bobby knew Jack was gay, something Ennis could not get his mind around. If his girls knew-- if his girls thought he was gay... A few years ago Bobby got involved in sports at home and stopped coming to visit regularly. Jack'd taken it hard, but tried not to show it, especially not to Bobby.

The last time Ennis'd seen Bobby, the boy'd been dragged to Ennis's on one of his visits, as he usually was, and had publicly declared Ennis "dad's boyfriend" in the Denny's down on Rt. 1. Ennis-- he'd just... left the restaurant. Jack'd taken Bobby home, and never brought him over again. Ennis missed the little bugger, but Ennis figured he was no good to be around a kid, corrupting him to think and say things like that. Or maybe he was just a coward, like Jack'd said at that last fight... might be even Bobby was braver than Ennis and Jack didn't want Bobby to learn Ennis's yellow-bellied ways.

Bobby must have noticed his stare, though, because it was being returned now. And Ennis was feeling about as foolish as a man could feel for throwing his man's son out of his life on account of a kid's remark at a Denny's, and a remark that was as good as true, because there was nothing but sadness and accusation in the eyes that were staring back at him, and they weren't kid's eyes no more, but the eyes of a man who knew what was what.

For the first time Ennis wondered if Bobby's sudden lack of regular visits had anything to do with him.

"Bobby?" Well, they couldn't go on staring forever.

"Mr. Ennis." It's what Bobby'd always called him.

"You... you're going to school here? I thought you were living in--"

"Massachusetts? We just moved here, actually. Mom got a real good job offer."

"Does your dad know?"

"Not yet."

Ennis couldn't stand the amount of sadness he was seeing in Bobby's eyes. "You gotta go to class or something?"

"It's my lunch, actually."

"Mine too," Ennis nodded.

The vice principal cleared her throat.

Ennis turned to her. "Ms. Turner. Bobby here's a, uh, family member. You think I could borrow him for lunch?"

Ms. Turner sighed. "I guess maybe a role model couldn't hurt him. Just borrow him elsewhere than the main office, please, Mr. del Mar."

"Alright. Come on, Bobby, show you the boiler room."

Bobby shouldered his back pack, shoved his ear-length dark hair back where he wanted it, and lumbered along behind Ennis. Halfway there, though, his steps slowed until they stopped entirely, and he said, "Hey man, thanks for helping me skip class. I owe you." Bobby turned and walked quickly away.

"Wait!" Ennis called after him. But like his father, another Twist back was turned from Ennis and leaving. Ennis swore under his breath.

That night when Ennis got home, he nearly called Jack for the first time in, well, in possibly ever. No, Ennis had called him a couple times through the years, when he got the new apartment, when the divorce went through. Once, Christ, some other guy'd answered the phone, out of breath. Maybe Ennis had meant some of the things he'd said to Jack during that fight, after all. But Bobby didn't know the names of any of those guys. Ennis didn't have to ask Jack or Bobby to know that. He just knew. Bobby hadn't stopped visiting his dad on account of what any of those guys had done.

But he decided not to call. Right now, that memory fresh on his tongue like a sour taste, he couldn't anyway. What if Ed picked up?

But something was up with Bobby, and Ennis was determined to find out what. The kid had always been a good one, getting high grades. He didn't skip classes or get into fights.

The next day at school, Ennis waited, slowly unloading the trash after classes, by the main exit. Most of the kids left through here, but it was a big school, and the chances of seeing Bobby weren't great. He knew he should wait until later like usual, when the halls were less crowded. Didn't matter, 'cause he didn't see Bobby.

The week went on like that until, one day, Ennis was walking through the hallway on his way to check out the heating in a classroom the teacher said was mighty cold when he ran into Bobby. Literally. His head was down as it usually was, though he was deeper in thought this time. He'd missed seeing his girls at Christmas this time, and he was thinking about whether they would be able to visit (and whether he even wanted them to given the state of his apartment) for Junior's birthday when he collided with the shaggy-haired boy.

"Whoah there. Sorry about--" Ennis started before he saw who it was.

"Oh, hey." Bobby was already scurrying away.

But Ennis'd seen what he'd seen. "Bobby! Wait. Where'd you--" Ennis darted an arm out as Bobby dodged, but Ennis's reflexes had always been particularly good. He caught a black shirtsleeve and held firm. It was during class and Bobby was cutting again, but Ennis didn't notice that. His attention was arrested by the swollen welt around Bobby's left eye. "What happened."

"Nothing."

"You get in another fight?"

"I didn't get in any fight! I didn't get in that fight last week, either! He shoved me!" Under this teenage exterior, Ennis saw the whiny twelve-year-old he remembered peaking through, and he knew Bobby wouldn't lie to him. Or at least, the Bobby he'd used to know wouldn't lie to him. But he'd severed those ties himself. Ennis fought down the regret, wishing he could take back every minute of the years this boy had probably thought back on some Denny's in Maryland with a heap of emotions and wondering what he'd done wrong. Jack should have left Ennis then, not years later.

After a moment of silence, measuring Bobby's words, the pleading in Bobby's eyes, Ennis let go. "Alright. I believe you. But then where'd you get the shiner?"

"I dunno, I guess I... I tripped. I mean, I was playing baseball and I fell."

"You fell?"

"Yeah."

"Playing baseball."

"That's what I said."

"In the middle of winter."

Bobby just stared at his shoes.

"You are the worst liar I ever met."

"You aren't-- I don't have to tell you shit. You aren't anything to me." But Bobby didn't leave.

They stood a moment longer before Ennis started. "I'm less than anything, Bob. Don't know how much you been keeping up with your dad, but you say I'm not anything to you, and it's surely true. Guess I'm still your dad's friend is all." That part was true, because Ennis'd been trying hard to be that much, and right now he was grateful he had that much to offer to Bobby.

"Yeah?" Bobby's eyes snapped up, a paler blue than his dad's, but deep with emotion.

"Yeah."

"Sorry to hear that." He sounded as genuine as a man could sound.

Ennis nodded. "And I sure am sorry to hear how tough that winter baseball season is being on you."

Bobby smiled then, just a little one, but it was the first time Ennis had seen Bobby's smile since he'd seen the boy a week ago, and it was worth seeing. Not a little tyke no more, for sure, but a man with a smile.

"Bobby, you want to tell me the truth?"

The smile dropped right off.

"Something happen here at school? Someone picking on you?"

"No! No, school's fine. Ken shoved me, but we were just horsing around, not even fighting! Ms. Turner blew that way out of proportion!"

"Someone else then? Someone at home?"

"No! Just leave me alone, alright?" Bobby finally shoved off of Ennis, who hadn't been holding him at all, and ran down the hallway as if heading for somewhere, though it couldn't be class if he was cutting. Ennis stared after him wondering what he'd said, but remembering having a conversation not too different with another blue-eyed boy in another high school. Back then, though, when he'd found out Jack's dad was beating on him, he'd been too young and powerless and stupid to know what to do about it. Now he was the adult.

That night Ennis got home and he did call Jack. No one answered but Jack. There were no background sounds, just Jack and what sounded like a dishwasher. Ennis kept the conversation short, just long enough to ask if Lureen had ever remarried. Jack said yeah, but only in the last year, some guy named Jay, why. But Ennis hung up before Jack got to thinking too hard.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** These characters are based on those by Annie Proulx, and I'm not making money from them.

**AN:** Thanks to **wannabebrit** for the beta.

* * *

Chapter 3

"Hello?"

"Hey. Uh, Lureen ever remarry?"

"Ennis!?"

"Yeah. Lureen remarry?"

"Well fuck me. You get a visitation from Jesus Christ? Why are you calling me? Someone die?"

"Would you just answer my question?"

"Yeah. Uh, about a year ago. Some guy named Jay. Why?"

"Uh, thanks."

Ennis hung up before Jack could get his head on straight enough to even figure out what was going on.

* * *

"Well you will never guess who just called."

Ed had heard the phone ring from inside the shower. He was working the soaped-up washcloth into his armpits when Jack pulled back the red shower curtain.

"You know my friend Ennis?"

Ed swallowed some smart ass remark. Jack only talked about Ennis some days like a broken record, Ed only half sure they were just friends. Ok, so he couldn't totally swallow his smart-ass remark. He answered, "No, who's that? And would you mind, I'm trying to shower here." He pulled the curtain back, cutting off the draft of cold air coming in through the open bathroom door and the open shower curtain.

Jack pulled the shower curtain back. "Asshole." His smile belayed his insult. "Did you even hear me?"

"Yeah, I heard you. What'd he have to say?"

"That's besides the point. He's called me maybe five times in his entire life."

"Well, I can see how that might hinder communication in a relationship. Now, can I please shower?" Ed pulled the shower curtain closed, not really as cranky as he was letting on, knowing Jack knew that.

Jack continued, ratcheting his voice up to make up for the curtain. "He was asking if Lureen remarried."

"Your ex-wife?"

"Yeah."

"Why would he care?"

Jack paused. "Well... I don't know."

"It must be important if he never calls."

"... yeah."

Ed pulled back the curtain on his own now, his brow creased to match Jack's. "Do you think you ought to call her?"

"Yeah, maybe. Couldn't hurt."

Ed watched Jack walk away, concern, trepidation, and the nugget of foreboding worming into his gut. He was sure it was nothing. He got out and dried off, dressed in his khaki shirt and dark brown pants, an ensemble he knew set off his medium brown skin. He was putting on his small rounded wire-frame glasses when he came into the townhouse kitchen to see Jack was sitting still at the kitchen table. Jack look stressed, much more so than Ed had seen him mere minutes before.

"What's up?," Ed asked.

"Her number's been disconnected," Jack mumbled. "I even tried her cell. Nothing."

Ed sighed long and hard. "Well, it's probably nothing. Did you try information?"

"Yeah. They only had her old number."

"Well... we can go out to dinner another night, maybe? There's really nothing you can do about it tonight. There could just be something wrong with her phone and it'll be working again tomorrow..."

"Yeah. No, let's go out. I can't worry about this shit. She's an adult."

"But your son--"

"She wouldn't steal Bobby away or anything stupid like that. Let's go get that food." Jack stood and forced what Ed could tell was a fake smile, but they were going to try to have a Friday night out, evidently, and he was game if this is what Jack needed.

* * *

Ennis knew he should take his information to the proper authorities, but he also knew he'd have to explain how he knew Bobby Twist and his father. Maybe they'd buy an "old friends" song and dance, but maybe they wouldn't. It wasn't a bet Ennis was willing to take. It wasn't one he could take. He'd thought about ways to tell school authorities about seventeen times. At the least he'd turned away, palms sweaty. Once, he'd booked it to the men's room, thinking he was going to throw up. Visions were flashing before his eyes of his girls crying, of courtrooms and trials and "the prosecution calls the victim's father's homo lover to the stand." But Ennis couldn't just stand by and do nothing, either.

In the end the easiest route was just to break the law and take things into his own hands, but it also suited Ennis the best. He hadn't ever really trusted other people to do the work he knew he could do himself. He was an intimidating figure, with a body built for hard labor and for fighting, and he knew it. So on Wednesday late in the evening, when the school had shut down, he used his master key to open the records room, flipped open the file to "Twist", and scribbled on a piece of envelope he drew from his pocket the address of Lureen and James Webb. He knew he ought to wait as well, but now that he had the street address and knew just exactly where that was, he couldn't have made himself do it if his own life depended on the waiting.

It was already eleven at night when Ennis pulled up in front of a new, large, well-lit, brick colonial. He slammed his truck door, feeling anger boiling up from his feet. He was going to have to try to be civil. He'd met Lureen just once that he could recall, when Lureen had taken Bobby on a trip and had driven through to drop him off. Jack'd dragged Ennis to the pick-up. In retrospect, Ennis wondered if maybe Lureen had done it intentionally to meet this man who was spending time around her son. How come Ennis hadn't seen that then?

Ennis knocked on the door even though there was a doorbell. Anything he could do to bleed the adrenaline out, he would.

It was a few moments before a man opened the door. He had a short military cut and piercing blue eyes, lighter than Bobby's, but deeper than Jack's somehow. The man resembled Jack, that was for sure, and Ennis saw that maybe Lureen had a type.

"Hello, can I help you?" The man-- James-- sounded nice enough.

"Hi, uh..." Dammit, the man was supposed to be evil, like Jack's dad, and he could have dragged Bobby out of here easily.

Lureen appeared in the warmly-lit hallway behind the man. "Do I know you?"

"Mrs. Twist-- I mean, Mrs., uh, Webb?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm--"

James had stepped back to observe them.

"Jay, it's alright, I know him."

"You do?"

Lureen nodded.

Bobby appeared on the landing of the stairs just then, staring down, wide-eyed. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm..."

"You know him?," James asked Bobby with an audible measure of hostility.

Lureen's eyes grew big.

Ennis watched the scene unfold helplessly as Bobby turned towards James. Bobby was on the stairs and had the high ground. "Hell yes I know him. He only fucked my dad since before I was born!"

Ennis staggered back like he'd been sucker-punched, but he didn't hardly have time because suddenly "nice" James was cursing and talking about "beating the faggot out of" Bobby. Bobby hurled himself down the stairs, calling, "bring it on." Lureen scrambled after him, trying to pull the two apart, but Bobby was standing up to James, whirling obscenities back, things that made Ennis's face burn.

As much as he wanted to run from the scene, Ennis's vision turned red when he saw James's fist connect with Bobby's stomach. Bobby gasped and bent double, and before he knew what was going on, James was twisted back against the wall in Ennis's grip. Ennis heard the knife-sharp dangerous edge to his voice when he said, "Bobby, go on and pack a bag."

Bobby didn't question Ennis and scampered upstairs. He returned in less than five minutes with his backpack and a gym bag. Still holding James, Ennis instructed Bobby to go on out to the truck and wait there.

"Ma'am." Ennis addressed Lureen while watching James. "You can rest assured I'll take good care of your son. If you want to know where you can get hold of him, Jack has my phone and address. He'll be at school regular, but I work there as well, so nobody better try anything." The last was directed at James. Taking one deep breath, Ennis slammed James's head hard into the drywall. The man slumped dazed to the floor, and Ennis touched the tip of his baseball hat to Lureen before following where Bobby had gone out the front door.

They drove back to Ennis's in silence for a while before Bobby spoke. "You didn't have to do that, you know."

"Yeah? Seemed sort of like I did," Ennis mumbled.

They didn't speak for a while longer, but Ennis was remembering some of the words Bobby'd let fly to James. James said he was going to beat the faggot out of Bobby, and Bobby'd said all sorts of ear-burning things about sex and, well... Ennis eyed the boy on the seat next to him. Could it be that Bobby was-- that way? Too? Maybe he'd caught it from Jack, or Ennis himself? He worried about his own girls, and found somewhere the power to clear his throat and ask about something that was probably not his business.

"So, uh, Bobby? Is it true that you're, you know..."

"What?" Bobby sounded miserable.

"Uh, you know."

"No I don't know, what?"

He had a lot of his daddy in him. "Uh... like your daddy?"

Bobby watched Ennis for a moment. "Yeah, I am. I have his hair and his eyes."

Ennis sighed. Now Bobby was just being difficult. "That ain't what I mean and you know it."

Bobby slumped further down. "No. It's just... Jay says all these awful things about gay guys, and about dad in particular, so I pretend to be gay because I know it flips him out, you know?"

"But... why you want him to beat on you?"

"I don't want him to... can't say I mind beating the crap out of him, though. He's not _that_ much bigger than me."

Ennis could see now the difference between Bobby's situation and Jack's back in high school. This James fellow wasn't Bobby's dad. Lureen and Jay had only been married about a year, so Bobby probably hadn't known him too long. Bobby probably didn't think of James as a parent, but as a man who came around and insulted his daddy.

"Worse thing," Bobby continued, "is that he constantly makes fun of my mom for marrying my dad. And sometimes he says that I'm so messed up I'm like the proof that it was a fucked-up mistake." The last was said with such dejection it got Ennis right where it counted. He thought about Bobby and Denny's and wondered how many people in Bobby's life had sent him the message that he was messed up.

"Well," Ennis said, changing the subject, not ready to confront that last one, "I only have one bed, so I can sleep on the couch. I don't mind. But I don't have any food. Guess we can just order pizza every night."

Bobby mustered a weak smile in Ennis's direction. "I think I could handle that, Mr. Ennis."

"You're an adult now, Bob. You can call me Ennis."


	4. Chapter 4

They split one pepperoni and one sausage over Cokes Monday night. The entire weekend had been spent picking up odds and ends from the store that Bobby had forgotten, buying extra sheets and enough food to feed a teenage boy, but Monday and school had brought back routine, and they would have to think about the next steps. The situation was awkward enough, and neither was trying to broach the subject, but Ennis, realizing he was the adult in the situation, finally broke the silence.

"Need to tell your dad you're in town."

"Yeah I know." Bobby sighed.

"Why haven't you done it yet?"

"Honestly? I guess I didn't want more trouble with Jay. I didn't want him to have Dad's address or anything. And we just moved. I wasn't even unpacked. And I've been busy with school. Although I'm already two quarters behind..." That last sentence was said with a quiet defeat.

"Well you won't get ahead skipping class."

"What difference does it make? I'm already screwed."

"Watch your language."

Bobby fixed Ennis with a glare. "Screwed? That's totally not even a curse word. I can come up with some curse words..."

"Yeah I think I heard. Thank you but no thank you."

Bobby chuckled and put down his slice of pizza. "Well, I'm stuffed. I'm gonna go do my homework."

"I got to do the laundry. You got any?"

Bobby shook his head. Leaving the boxes of pizza on the table, Ennis gathered his own dirty clothes and removed himself to the laundry room.

All weekend Jack worried, but maybe the phone company just didn't do work on the weekends? By Monday at work, though, Jack had worried himself into a fury of nerves. He'd called Ed six times- a new record- trying to come up with new and more plausible reasons for Lureen's still-disconnected number that could be in some way related to Ennis's cryptic phone call, but every reason he come up with became increasingly elaborate until there was no solution left.

It was later than usual, nearly eight in the evening, when Jack found himself pulling his usual key-juggling routine in front of Ennis's apartment. He'd had to come here. He needed an explanation, and he needed not to get hung up on like last time. He could not endure another day of worry like today.

Jack swung the door open and was hit immediately with the bold smell of pizza. There were two pies open on the table- unusual, but maybe Ennis decided to save some for later in the week. Jack helped himself to a slice of pepperoni and observed the dark apartment. He saw a golden shaft of lamplight spilling from the bedroom: the only sign of someone home.

He didn't announce himself, just like he never did. Stuffing pizza in his mouth, Jack stepped through the bedroom door, expecting to see Ennis there, and, he had to admit, hoping to catch the man in a compromised position. Not that he wouldn't turn away and apologize, but a little glance never hurt anyone.

Instead, Jack found himself trying not to choke on the slice as Bobby flung himself out of bed, a flurry of textbooks hitting the floor, a couple papers falling. A pencil fell from his hand. "Dad! This isn't what it looks like!"

Jack swallowed his too-large bite. "It isn't!"

"No! I'm not... I'm not sleeping with Ennis."

Jack starting laughing despite himself, coughing around inhaled pizza. "Bobby, you could be Peter North, and that would not be what it looked like."

"Peter North?," Bobby asked.

"Better you don't know," Jack answered. He slapped his chest and tried to smarten up. "What it _looks_ like is my teenage son has run away from home."

"Oh... then I guess it is what it looks like. Sort of."

Jack inhaled, trying to ignore the itching burn of breathing in pizza crust, trying to be angry at Bobby. But, after working himself into a frenzy all day long, at least now maybe Ennis's phone call had some context, and more than that, Jack felt relief washing over him. Bobby- well, he had what looked like the remains of a decent shiner around his left eye, and his hair was a lot longer than it had been when Jack'd seen him nearly a year ago, but he was in one piece.

They'd been standing there staring at each other for a minute, but finally Jack wiped the last of his pizza-hand on his jeans and advanced on his little boy. He exhaled, "goddamn," before he scooped the boy up in a bear-hug.

Bobby squirmed a way, twisting and fighting, because he was a teenage boy and that was the prescribed reaction that came in the manual. Jack laughed and held tighter. "You have grown, kiddo!"

"Dad! Let go..."

Jack did let go, though it was because he heard the front door open and close.

"Hey! Ennis! You got something going on here that you think you ought to explain to me?"

"Shit." Jack heard Ennis curse from the front of the small apartment.

Jack chuckled and called back. "Yeah, it seems you've been hiding a handsome young man. He seems a little young for you, but maybe he's got a cute father!"

By the time Ennis had arrived at the bedroom door and was casting puzzled looks at the two men. "You talk to him?," Ennis asked Bobby.

"Not yet. He just got here," Bobby answered.

"Maybe I ought to leave you two alone, then," Ennis answered.

Bobby sunk onto the bed like he'd been delivered a prison sentence.

Jack sunk down into the couch on top of the rumpled sheets. He reflected mildly that he'd found his way back to Ennis's bed, but the thought brought him no real amusement or satisfaction in light of the situation.

"Well what are we going to do?" He was surprised to hear the "we" even out of his own mouth.

Ennis sat in Jack's leather armchair. "Not much we can do I guess."

"Gotta press charges," Jack answered, rubbing is face with his hand.

"Not sure that's best," Ennis muttered.

Bobby looked lost and scared while Jack and Ennis both studied him. The boy finally answered, "Don't, dad. I'm fine. Everything's fine."

Jack sighed. "Well, guess you better pack your stuff up."

"What?"

"Come on. We'll worry about the rest in the morning. For now, let's take you home."

"Dad, I'm not going back-"

"No, you're going to come with me."

"But I can stay here with Ennis! I'm fine here."

"I'm your father and I said-"

"I don't care! I'm old enough to take care of myself, and I want to stay here!"

"He doesn't even have an extra room, Bobby. Our townhouse has a room you can have all to yourself. Come on." Jack stood, meaning to end the discussion.

"Our? I'm not- No, I'm fine here! Ennis said he doesn't mind, and he can take me into school more easily anyway."

"Truly don't mind, Jack." Ennis interrupted Jack's thoughts. "You come by here often enough..."

Jack turned towards Ennis, who'd said that last with some bitterness, but Jack didn't have the least plans to acknowledge it. "Ennis, you can't just sleep on the couch."

"Ain't nothing wrong with that couch."

"Bobby's going to Laurel?"

Ennis nodded.

Jack huffed in exasperation, knowing when he was outnumbered. "Alright." He threw his hands up and rose to his feet. "But you better check the smoke detectors because it scares me having everyone I care about in such a crappy apartment. " Jack turned to Bobby, pointing at him, "And I did not say I was not going to press charges against that, that... _fucker_!" Jack's face flushed red, his index finger poking the air in front of Bobby with the violence of a punch, as if Jay were standing right there.

Bobby's liquid eyes opened wide and his dark hair fell into his face.

Ennis took a step forward and leaned a strong hand on Jack's shoulder, saying low. "Don't think we got to worry about him."

"Yeah?" It came out animalistic and breathless.

"Not if he wants to keep his head out of his drywall," Ennis answered.

Jack's shoulders fell. "Well. That doesn't... I mean... Lureen is smarter than that."

"I know she is, bud." Ennis sounded sincere and sorry. "How 'bout we all just sit down ans forget about that for a little while, ok?"

Jack didn't know how he was supposed to forget about the vision of some man he didn't know throwing punches at his only child. He didn't think it was an image he'd shake from his imagination as long as he lived. Yet, he could see his own response was only working Bobby up more, and that wasn't what he wanted. It'd been too, too long since he'd seen his son. And now Bobby was living in the the area, and would be living with Ennis, and Jack could visit every day if he wanted. They needed to put this Jay thing in the past and move on with the evening.

Jack nodded, and the three of them settled in front of the TV. Jack got up once to step outside and call Ed. It felt good to hear Ed's anger and outrage, to hear Ed talk about calling his lawyer, to hear Ed's excitement about meeting Bobby for the first time. Jack wished he could say Bobby shared that enthusiasm, but Bobby's indignant "Our? I'm not- No, I'm fine here!" echoed in Jack's head. He wondered what sentiments those words might be hiding.

When ten o'clock rolled around, Jack couldn't stall any more. He was tired and wanted to fall into arms that were willing to bear his weight. Maybe he would have preferred they be Ennis's, but those hopes were past. "You have my number," he reminded Ennis as he pulled on his jacket.

"Yup."

Jack moved towards the cold pizza and grabbed another slice. He patted Bobby on the shoulder, and murmured "see you tomorrow" around a full mouth. Opening the door, he hollered, "smoke detectors!" one more time before he left the building, got into his car, and drove, though now he truly could not say whether he was going towards or away from home.

Everyone he cared about. That's what Jack had said. Ennis lied there late into the night staring up at the ceiling thinking about those words, wondering what they meant. Maybe Jack'd just meant Bobby. Jack was a good father. Ennis would have to try to live up to that for Jack's boy. He'd checked the batteries in the smoke detector twice before bed, enduring Bobby's smirk the entire time.

Everyone he cared about. What about Ed? Didn't he care about Ed? Hadn't he made that phone call to Ed? Surely Jack cared about Ed, too. He just misspoke.

Still, he did say he cared about Ennis, Ed or no Ed.

Of course he cared about Ennis. They were friends.

Did friends make friends check their smoke detectors? Maybe if they were taking care of their sons.

Did friends let friends take care of their sons?

If they'd been friends since high school. If they'd fucked like bunnies since high school. If they'd been... in love, since high school.

Ennis groaned and rolled over, burying his face into his pillow. He didn't know how things had got so fucked up in his life, but having Bobby here with him felt good. It felt like a claim on Jack. And that had to be a hopeful thing. It had to be.

Ennis was gathering pieces of Jack's heart. He had a big piece now- he had Bobby. But that wasn't the part he wanted. He needed the part Ed had. But he couldn't ever give up the pieces he'd got in this friendship bargain, so he'd hold tight and make due.


	5. Chapter 5

_Cunningham Falls was a little ways out, but Jack took his mother's car in the middle of the night, picked Ennis up at the back gate to the trailer park where he lived, and drove them out there. They'd been friends- careful, cautious friends- all school year. The hours they'd spent talking and drinking stretched out and out from September to June, but when Jack suggested someplace more private almost as soon as the year had ended, Ennis had been almost too keen on the idea._

They sat on the trunk of the blue Chevy out on an abandoned road near the state park. They'd left the car running so the radio could play, and Jack had tuned it to that country music he hated but that he knew Ennis liked. When they were good and drunk, the humid blanket of summer air seemed to stick Jack's clothes to him, and he peeled out of his shirt.

He noticed Ennis looking. It was the final step Jack needed to dive crazy-head-first over the bottomless ravine. He went in for a kiss.

Sixty seconds later Jack was trying not to panic while the man he'd been crushing on since the day he'd set foot in Linganore High School was positioning him, entering him, and claiming his body. Jack understood then that Ennis'd claimed his heart already. This was the final nail in a coffin they'd already made together.

They lazed in the afterglow, Jack tangling his summer breath in Ennis's sweaty hair. The humidity was up near a hundred and it was only now June. A storm'd come through earlier in the evening, leaving every surface steaming.

Deep in the night Jack heard a car engine somewhere. Ennis jerked a little at the sound. If someone found them now, pants around their knees, music humming over the sound of night insects, there wouldn't be a place to hide. Jack couldn't care less, but from the nervous glaze that spread over Ennis's features, he thought maybe he was alone in that.

As soon as it had come, the car engine faded into the night, and with it Ennis's fear. Ennis fished in his pants pocket for a pack of cigs- his sister's, Jack knew. Jack took one, and they added smoke to the steam and sweat of the evening. They hadn't said a single word, and that was just fine. Everything was fine, because Jack had the best thing right here in his arms.

Jack woke abruptly, sweating under too many blankets. A dream faded under the buzzing of his alarm, but he caught the tail end of it, and gasped when he was able to pull it back by that tail to full, vivid color. He'd dreamt of it like it'd happened just last night. Ennis had only been fifteen years old. He used to laugh a lot more then, Jack remembered, though his laughs had been quiet, mild, velvety. So different from how Jack had been- so wild.

Those years that'd followed- they'd probably been the best years Jack and Ennis shared together. They'd been an item three years in high school, and if anyone caught on, they didn't say. Sure, Jack had more than one rumor about him, but he was careful to keep them rumors. Once there was a rumor about Ennis. That kid got his nose broke, and there hadn't been any more.

Jack remembered how he used to pull up into the woods behind Ennis's trailer park. Ennis would sneak out in the middle of the night, slipping over the tall fence effortlessly with his lean body and right into Jack's passenger seat without any hesitation. Part of Jack thought it would always be that easy.

Jack shook his head and climbed out of bed. Ed had already left for work. He was an early riser and a workaholic. It was too bad, because just now Jack could use some reassurance that he should be here and not draped awkwardly over a leather armchair in a crappy too-crowded apartment with the men he considered belonged to him. But that was it, wasn't it? They would always be there, belonging to him. Bobby didn't have anywhere to go, and Ennis didn't have anyone to go to, so no matter what Jack did, no matter what he chose, at the end of the day they'd be there.

"You should press charges." Ed pushed a business card across the table towards Jack before taking a large bite of his bratwurst.

Jack shook his head, but he lifted the business card and stared at it. "Maybe."

"Not maybe. Yes."

"Well, Bobby says he provoked him."

"Doesn't matter." Ed's definitive statement was designed to end the discussion.

"And it's not like I have any evidence."

"You have an eye witness."

"Yeah," Jack sighed and eyed his mostly-uneaten dinner. "Something makes me doubt Ennis would be jumping to testify."

"He had bruises. The teachers can testify."

"He also got into a fight at school that same week." Jack threw the business card back at Ed. It spiraled down on an invisible air current, finally settling soundlessly on the marble tabletop.

"Well, you have my point of view." Ed sounded a little frustrated.

"Yeah, but I don't think we have to worry about him any more."

"You don't get it, do you?," Ed asked with a measure of defeat. "People like this Jay guy are just going to go around discriminating and abusing and pulling their power plays all their life until someone can put them in their place. You're giving him exactly what he wants- Bobby out of his life."

"And I think you don't get it," Jack's face was growing red. "I was raised by a person like Jay so I think I know something about it, and Bobby does not need to be dragged through courtrooms. I could care less what Jay wants, but what Bobby needs is to be away from that man and to be able to concentrate on school and friends and sports and whatever else he wants. I'm giving Bobby exactly what he needs- to have Jay out of his life."

"Whatever," Ed answered, shrugging Jack off, making Jack feel like Ed hadn't heard a word he'd just said. "I guess you're his father, you know best."

"Damn right."

But Ed was already clearing the table. Ed had shared his point of view, alright. It was the one they taught him at West Point. There was a proper procedure you were supposed to follow to make sure justice was served and people learned their lessons. It was a lovely view, and Jack even bought it sometimes, suckered into Ed's idealism. But Bobby was too young to go on some kind of crusade for justice against his step-father when what he needed was a stable household, and he didn't really have that right now. As much as Ennis's offer was generous, it weighed on Jack's mind. This was not right. It wasn't the kind of place a teenage boy could bring a girlfriend home to. Bobby couldn't live there forever.

"How do you know they aren't going to get you for kidnapping, Jack?"

"Huh?" He'd been off in lala land and had missed what Ed said.

"Kidnapping. Your friend kidnapped your son. Lureen does have custody?"

Jack cursed to himself. Ed was right. "Yeah. But, she wouldn't."

"And you know that."

"Well... I have to call her anyway." Jack approached the phone as a man approached a prized weapon, lifting it from its hilt. He pulled from his pocket a piece of the envelope that had been Ennis's electric bill. On it was an address- Lureen's address in Laurel. He turned his back to Ed, not sure why, but feeling like Ennis's electric bill shouldn't be subjected to this view of domesticity. One call to information later, the phone was ringing at that address.

A man answered. He sounded polite. "Hello?"

"Hello. Is Lureen there?"

"Sure. Can I tell her who's calling?"

It was a moment of truth. How was this going to go down? Was he going to sneak under this man's radar, or come in right under his nose. Jack might have had reason to be afraid of his own father, but this was a man who'd been beating on his son, and Jack was not going to be sneaking anywhere.

"It's Jack Twist. Could you put her on the line please?"

That must've had the intended effect, because he heard some hushed talking, then Lureen's voice saying clear as day, "Hush, don't say that, he can hear you!" Rather ironic since Jack hadn't, in fact, heard the man.

"Jack?"

"Lureen."

"Bobby-"

"Bobby's fine. He's staying with Ennis 'cause he wanted to. He's still going to school. You've got nothing to worry about."

He heard her exhale. "Jack, I'm so sorry. I-"

"Look, it's alright. Maybe we can get together and talk about it?"

"Yeah, we should."

"Why didn't you tell me you were moving?"

Lureen sighed hard. "It's... complicated."

"Alright. Where's this new job? When can we meet?"

"Downtown. How about lunch sometime?"

"I can take off a couple hours tomorrow. How does that sound?"

"Yeah. That sounds good."

They met in the basement of the Ronald Reagan Building: neutral, unassuming turf.

Jack'd eaten there a couple times before. He'd done the Whitman-Walker AIDS walk last couple years running. That was how he met Ed, actually. He'd been organizing a team from his work, and Ed'd been organizing a team from his own work, and, both teams being really small, someone in one office'd known someone in the other. The teams had joined together despite the fact that the offices were separated by thirty miles and two counties.

After that walk, people who didn't have anywhere to go or anyone to be with had found their way down here for food. And now here he was with Lureen. It seemed this was the spot to take all the people in his life who weren't Ennis.

She looked dejected. "Jack, I'm sorry. Jay's a good man, just in that-"

"Yeah, just."

"I should have intervened before it got so bad, but it wasn't like Jay was beating on him."

"Ask me if I care."

"Jack..."

"I'm sorry, Lureen. The important thing is that Bobby is out of that situation, and I will do whatever I need to do to keep things that way."

Lureen watched him carefully, picking and eating the broccoli off her gourmet food court pizza between glances. Finally she answered, "I'm not arguing."

"Good. Then I gather I don't need a lawyer?"

She shook her head, her long blond wavy hair that made her look like a movie star following the movement. Jack remembered when it had been short and brown and up in ponytails for late night study sessions back when they'd been students together. They'd both been working on business degrees, her for a shot at the big time, him for a shot away from the small time. "Let's not talk lawyers, Jack."

"Alright. But you better make sure Jay stays away from Bobby. And me. And Ennis. And Ed. And everyone goddamn else."

Lureen laughed a little, and Jack found it was a sound he'd missed, always like she had an inside joke going in her own head. "He wants nothing more. And who is Ed?"

"Ed? My boyfriend."

Her carefully-colored all-day-stay-whatever lips pressed together. "Then you and Ennis...?"

"Nope."

"Ho-ly shit."

"Yup."

"Jesus Christ."

"I know."

"I swear to God I thought if you two had both gone through high school and college and marriages and kids and all that crap, you were practically out of the woods now." She sighed hard. "Hell, I think half the time dating over the years, I was thinking to myself, 'now why can't I just find what came to Jack so damn easily,' you know? Ennis might have a screw loose or something, but you had what everyone wants."

"Says you. You weren't living with it."

"That's true."

They stared at their food for a minute before Lureen reopened the conversation. "Are you happier with Ed, then?"

Jack hesitated, not knowing what to say. It was the question he'd been running from. He'd been happier with Ennis at times, but a lot lower with Ennis at times, too, and the low points had grown deeper and more frequent the farther they got from Cunningham Falls, trailer park nights, arcade games in the summer evenings, and blow jobs behind the high school dugout. Things weren't what they once were. Truth was, he needed to live his life, keep his job, not drink and sex himself into oblivion, and the only way he'd known to keep afloat had been to cut loose the one thing dragging him down.

But now he was adding it back in small doses, seeing if he could still tread water, breath air, live in the real world. His dream came rushing back to him and made his palms itch, and Jack wondered if he would ever feel with Ed what he'd felt so many times with Ennis, that rush of blood, not to his body but to his brain that made him feel as though he'd never need anything but this, ever.

"Jack?" Lureen'd caught him wandering back out to sea, to find the island he missed.

"Huh?"

"You happy?"

"I'm fine, Lureen. I'm an adult. Don't worry about me."

She laughed, more genuine this time. "Good to see you aren't living in the past, anyway."

He stared at her, wondering if she'd been reading his mind.

"And while you're at it, you should shave off that mustache, Magnum."

Jack's hand went protectively to his face.

"It's 2007. I guess I should just thank the lord you're not wearing parachute pants or something. Now, would it be a problem or can I come see Bobby sometime?"

"Yeah, uh, just call my cell anytime. We'll set it up. I'm sure he'd love to see you."

Lureen had to get back to work. She stood, donning sunglasses with enormous frames. He gave her a hug and felt her too-thin arms hugging him back. He wondered what Hollywood fashion was doing to the woman he'd cared so much about that she was taking up with the likes of Jay and letting her bones poke through her skin like this. Maybe she was really turning into a skeleton after all.

Jack watched her until she was gone, then walked back to his Metro stop. The Metro was close enough to his work that it'd made sense to take it down.

He rode back, smelling vinyl and plastic, listening to the clacking of the track and watching the tunnel lights and sunlight flash through the window. Jack's mind was heavy. The truth was, being with Ennis now was not as bad as it had been. Something had changed when Jack had walked away and stayed away. He didn't know what, but it had. His island now included other people- Bobby, for one. Even if it was only one, it was someone. And Ennis had gone to see Lureen and Jay, hadn't he?

But what did it matter? Jack wasn't going to leave Ed for Ennis, right? No, Ennis had not changed near enough. Jack wouldn't consider going back.

The question raised itself, like an enemy within friendly lines, a saboteur, struggling to his consciousness to ask, what would it take from Ennis for Jack to consider it?

It didn't matter, because God had stopped delivering miracles to Jack Twist a long time ago.


	6. Chapter 6

"Hello?"

"Bobby?"

"Dad?"

"Yeah. Your mom wants to come over and see you tonight. Is that okay?"

"Shit! Dad, have you seen this place?"

Jack laughed. "What times does Ennis get off work?"

"Five."

"Well, your mom wants to come over at six."

"Fuck... Dad..." Bobby sure could be whiny at times, Jack thought.

"Never mind, I'll come on over and help you clean. I'll see you in an hour."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

Jack hung up. Ed was out back in their tiny square of lawn, clearing the one walkway from the small snow they'd gotten the night before with the snowblower they really didn't need. Jack stepped onto the little deck and called down, "Lureen wants to-"

"What?," Ed yelled before turning off his snowblower and giving Jack his full attention.

"Lureen wants to see where Bobby's staying. Ennis is working, so I'm going to head on over there and help him clean up."

Ed nodded, but he was frowning.

"What?"

"Jack, when do I get to meet your son? Or your ex? Or your other ex?"

So Ed had noticed. It wasn't that Jack was trying to keep Ed at a distance, just that- Bobby'd had some trouble with Jay and probably didn't need any new people in his life. When Bobby'd stuck to his guns about sticking with Ennis, Jack half wondered if Ed's presence played a supporting role in that. Plus Jack simply couldn't imagine that having Ed and Ennis in the same room together wouldn't result in the end of the Universe or something equally catastrophic. So Jack dodged the question entirely, pretending it had been a joke. He laughed against the onslaught, though he knew he wasn't really fooling anyone, and waved goodbye to Ed over his shoulder.

When he got to Ennis's, Jack found that Bobby wasn't exaggerating. It looked like they hadn't been putting food away all week, or doing dishes either. Par for the course for Ennis, but Jack had hoped that with Bobby around Ennis might make some effort. Bobby and Jack put in some sweat side-by-side and got the place smelling less than rancid. It didn't look half bad, either. By the time Ennis came home, Bobby and Jack were parked on the couch watching 'The Simpsons' and laughing at something on the show. For a good sixty seconds, Jack forgot that the game he played where he pretended Ennis was coming home to him was truly just a game. Something about the present situation was not working, but Jack wasn't a hundred percent on just exactly what that was. He didn't want to be shackled with Ennis's chains any more, but he guessed that didn't mean he couldn't miss the man he'd loved for twenty years. He did miss Ennis, even when they were together in the same room, and that was the God's honest truth.

They had leftover pizza before Lureen came over. They didn't need to, though, because she brought some home-cooked food. She wanted to see where Bobby was sleeping and the fridge he was eating out of- everything about the situation. At the end of the evening, she gave him a hug that he squirmed valiantly to escape, and she went on her way.

Jack nearly forgot that he had to go as well. He even considered asking Ennis if he could sleep there, exhausted as he was from all that cleaning. But sleeping there was a line he could not cross. He knew where it would lead and Jack doubted he could return, so he went home to find Ed soundly asleep in their comfortable and already-tidy townhouse. It was always pretty clean. Maybe it had never been properly lived in the entire time they'd been there.

The next morning when Jack went to the kitchen for breakfast, he found Ed sitting at the kitchen table, holding an envelope in his hands, looking pretty morose. A cup of coffee sat nearby. Ed drank his coffee all the way down while it was still steaming, but this one had clearly gone cold.

"What's wrong?," Jack asked.

Ed sighed and held the envelope up for Jack's inspection, dropping his head down at the same time.

Jack wandered over, concern making his stomach do odd somersaults. Maybe Lureen had broken her word and taken some legal action. The envelope must have come yesterday, though, and surely she would have been brave enough to say some little word.

Jack took the envelope and saw that it wasn't addressed or sealed. Opening it, he saw two tickets. The two Andrea Bocelli tickets he'd given Ed as a birthday present. Two tickets dated for tonight.

"Oh shit, Ed. I'm so sorry. I forgot."

"But you can still go, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Great. Have fun."

"What's that?"

"Jack," Ed lifted his eyes to meet Jacks. "Some guys from the ski club and I are going up to Wisp for a few days. I need to get away-"

"Come on, Ed. A lot's been going on, but there's no reason-"

"I just need some time-"

"We can still go to your concert. I know how much you love this guy-"

"And I know how much you love _that_ guy-"

"What're you—"

"Jack-"

"Ed-"

"Jack. Take Ennis. To the concert."

"But it's your concert."

"Do me a favor and take him."

"Well, he wouldn't- he wouldn't even go..."

"Maybe he'll surprise you." Ed pushed away from the table with an exasperation and finality that said he was done discussing this. "I packed my bags. Roger's picking me up at eleven."

"Ed, why-"

"Jack, I'm not willing to pretend that this is working well any more." Ed turned to face Jack on his way out of the kitchen. "We can talk when I've gotten back, when I've given myself a chance to see what I really want and need." Ed paused for a second before adding, almost tenderly. "At least ask him, though. You love him and I'd love to see it work between you two."

By the time Jack had recovered, Ed was packed and gone.

Ennis had Sundays off. He was making some canned soup for him and Bobby to split for lunch when the phone rang. It turned out to be Jack, asking, of all things, if Ennis wanted to go on a date. That wasn't how Jack put it, but there wasn't any doubt about what Jack was asking. He asked Ennis out to dinner in DC and a concert with an opera singer, and even suggested that maybe they could get coffee afterwards if it didn't rain like they'd said it might on the news. Jack reiterated about a thousand times that even though it was at the Verizon Center, it wasn't a hockey game. He repeated all of that again before he even paused long enough to ask Ennis if he had any interest.

Ennis knew what was being asked of him, and he knew that if he said no the chance would never pass his way again. It sounded terrifying, and he didn't know or care a thing about opera singers, but dinner out and a coffee didn't sound half bad, though he didn't dare think about who would pay. Bobby was old enough to take care of himself, so there was no excuse to be made. Just Ennis, his fear, and his second chance he'd feared might not come again.

Ennis knew people would make them out to be a couple. He knew people behind them in the arena might look at them and think that way. He knew he should hate that idea. But just right now, right now when that wasn't really what he was to Jack, the idea didn't bother him as much as it should. Right now it sent the same carefree shiver down his spine he got when he looked on the leather armchair still there in the middle of the night, or when he felt Jack's eyes on him over Chinese food. He wanted Jack to lay claim to him in public, even if it marked him as gay. After all, it's not as if his daughters would be there watching.

So when Jack finally asked Ennis, with unmistakable pessimism in his voice, if he had any interest in such an evening, Ennis didn't even hesitate to answer "Sounds good."

"I didn't think you... What?"

"Sound fine. I don't got a suit, though."

"I. I don't. Uh."

"Um. You reckon I could get away with a leisure coat with my black pants and a shirt?"

"A leisure coat? Yeah. Ought to go with my mustache."

"The what?"

"Never mind. I, uh, didn't expect you to accept."

Ennis understood, but he knew that if he was going to try and have a life with Jack he was going to have to do this kind of stuff sometimes. He didn't want to do that clubbing stuff, but this stuff- dinners and operas- this was probably the kind of stuff Brad did with Alma anyway. This was what people with sense and taste and college educations did, and Ennis was in love with such a man, so he was going to have to take some interest in those kinds of things. "Well. What time, then?"

"Uh, four. Four good?"

"Four's fine. What about Ed? He okay with this?"

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. It was his idea."

Ennis grunted his goodbye before hanging up. He thought he liked this Ed fellow more and more with every passing day.

"What's up?," Bobby asked, hanging out by his bedroom door.

"Nothing," Ennis answered, but he guessed Bobby'd heard at least his half of the conversation.

"Hot date?" Bobby asked.

Ennis grunted.

"With Dad?"

Ennis went to the kitchen for a beer, escaping Bobby's gaze, trying not to look too guilty.

"Well it's about fucking time," Bobby asserted.

"Language," Ennis mumbled.

"Hey, you're not going to bring him back here for loud, dirty sex where I can hear you, right, 'cause that'd be gross."

"Ain't gonna talk about this with you." Ennis plopped down on the couch. Bobby laughed and returned to his homework in his room. Ennis was getting used to Bobby's ways, the way he liked trying to see how far he could comfortably push a given situation. Ennis could see how Bobby had pushed Jay too far. Bobby'd been trying to do just that, but as the adult, it was Jay's job to not let himself be pushed. Ennis was learning that quickly.

Still, he couldn't hide from the fact that Bobby had planted an evil seed in Ennis's brain. Suddenly Ennis needed to know what was up with Ed and Jack, because otherwise sex with Jack Twist was just exactly what was on Ennis's mind.


	7. Chapter 7

Jack knocked. He hadn't knocked on this door since the day he'd stolen Ennis's key to get a copy made. Today, though, Jack stood there for a full five minutes, and then knocked.

Bobby swung the door open and it was obvious immediately to Jack how this was going to play out. Bobby eyed him skeptically. They stood silently in the doorway.

"Can I come in?," Jack asked.

Bobby sighed. "Just what are your intentions, anyway?"

"None of your business," Jack offered.

"Well come in, then, but he isn't ready. And he has to be home by ten o'clock."

"Yeah, and what are _you_ doing for the evening?" Jack turned the tables swiftly.

Bobby looked taken aback, but the game was gone and Jack was once again the parent. "I was just going to watch T.V.!"

"Just T.V.? You sure? No girls coming over?"

"I swear! You always suspect me!"

"Yeah, because I remember what I was doing when I was your age."

"Did _you_ have girls over every night?"

"Not exactly," Jack chuckled. "There was this one boy though."

"Whoa there!," Ennis appeared from the bedroom that still housed his clothing. "Don't you tell him no stories."

Bobby was already halfway to the kitchen in search of his dinner.

"Well, we better get going if we want to make our dinner reservations," Jack said.

Ennis nodded, and before he knew it, they were in Jack's car braving traffic into the city.

They ate in a hotel restaurant. Jack'd made reservations, but it didn't look necessary 'cause the place was empty. They ate in mostly silence. A weight hung between them unweighed, since Ennis didn't know what was going on with Ed and Jack and didn't think it was his place to ask, and Jack certainly hadn't offered any information. It could be things here were feather-light, or it could be that something heavy was going on, but Ennis just sat and let it hang.

He felt an itch on his back in the empty restaurant. They only shared it with the maître d' and waiter, until a couple people filtered in towards the end of the meal. Ennis tried to convince himself that the odds were in a place like this that one or both of those men were gay anyway so he was being foolish caring about what they thought. He didn't stop to think what that meant about his own preferences, or about his assumptions about people with his kind of preferences. There was time enough for all those kinds of thoughts when the pressures of this evening were over.

After their silent dinner, they went to the Verizon Center and sat in seats next to each other. Ennis watched people arrive in all different kind of clothes. Some people were in jeans and some in ball gowns. In the end, he and Jack- in a tidy, gray suit- were in the middle of the road. Ennis found it a comfortable place to be 'cause they didn't get much attention after all.

The singer was good. Real good. Ennis didn't know much about this kind of singing, opera stuff. Mostly he listened to country. But he enjoyed the show, except the way you could hear the Metro going through every fifteen minutes. If this was the kind of thing Jack needed, though, Ennis thought he'd been foolish to hold out for so many years, because the room was dark and all those eyes were not on him, but on the singer. The singer himself turned out to be blind, so he didn't give a damn who was watching him sing anyway. Dinner'd been much worse than this.

Besides, a couple times Ennis'd stole a glance at Jack, and Jack'd had a look like he was enjoying himself. Jack's blue eyes reflected the lights that were shining on the orchestra and the singer, and it did look a little like the county fair at night, only they were adults now. As he recalled, Jack'd had to drag him to that fair as well. Maybe this one'd been long overdue.

Afterwards, Ennis surprised himself by liking the smell of the air at night, by feeling a tingling urge in his gut to go anywhere but home. He didn't really want to go back to his old apartment with its leaky dishwasher, parting from Jack to hand the man back over to Ed. So when Jack asked if Ennis was interested in coffee on this cold night, Ennis mumbled yes and they found a place that was open after a little pleasant walking.

Jack's coffee was complex. It took about ten minutes for Jack to say the name to order it, and even the lady behind the cash register laughed when she repeated it back. Ennis stared up at the menu, but it felt to him like it was written in a different language, and he started to feel nervous and out of place.

"He'll have a medium house," Ennis was vaguely aware of Jack speaking.

"Is that together?"

Ennis was moving his hand towards his wallet when Jack answered yes and handed over a card. Jack paid for everything by card. That was not something Ennis, who swore by cash, had known before tonight.

There were two large leather armchairs in one corner of the coffee shop, and after they'd picked up their coffee, Jack headed right for them. They sipped in silence for a good while, before Jack cleared his throat. "So, uh, Ed and I had a fight."

"Nothing serious I hope," Ennis answered, not meaning it.

Jack didn't answer, and it occurred to Ennis that maybe Jack didn't know. "He's away for a few days," was all Jack said, and then, "So, how's Bobby doing at your place?"

Ennis heaved a sigh. "I dunno, bud. I take him to the library a lot to use the internet. I'm thinking I might have to get me some of that."

Jack nodded.

"And he's getting to be driving age. We have to teach him to drive. Might want to think about getting him a used car or something."

If Jack noticed the 'we', he didn't say.

"Don't know that my back can take the couch much longer either. Don't want to put Bobby out or make him move where he doesn't want." Ennis finally met Jack's eyes and saw a frank and concerned gaze looking back. They had themselves a situation that they'd been ignoring. Bobby was not really settled where he was saying, and that was plain, probably to Bobby as well.

Jack took a deep sip of his coffee and opened his mouth to speak when a young college-age girl with curly blond hair said the shop was closing. Jack stood and thanked her a couple times. Ennis followed suit, and soon they found themselves on a street corner in D.C. late at night, coffee cups discarded. No one was around, and only the winter wind accompanied them. Inside, the girl was putting chairs on tables.

"You were going to say something," Ennis said.

"Yeah... let's get back to the car. It's cold as a witch's tit out here."

Ennis tried not to laugh at the saying Jack must have picked up in his youth, and they walked in silence back to Jack's car.

Once there, though, they didn't talk. Jack started it, and after a moment of warming up, pulled it out onto the road. Ennis let the warmth of the heater run over him and lull him and he'd almost forgotten that they were supposed to be discussing something. Blinking away the sleep, Ennis looked around.

"Jack, where are we going?"

"Well, I was hoping we could continue this conversation?" Jack's hopeful, worried voice made Ennis's blood rush in his veins, though he couldn't say why.

"What're you sayin'?"

Jack shrugged. "No one's at my place... I thought at least we could talk... About Bobby." Jack flicked his gaze to Ennis at a red light, and just like that, Ennis nodded. He wasn't thinking about Bobby any more.

The drive to Jack's was long. It was nearly an hour normally, but Jack's foot seemed to have ideas of its own, because they made it to Columbia in just over thirty minutes, and Ennis's right hand ached from where he'd been gripping the door handle. Some things Jack did were frightening and wild. Jack had always been that way. But maybe things would go better if Ennis learned to hold on tight and trust the man.

Ennis was along for the ride as Jack brought him inside without flipping no the light. For once, they seemed to be of one mind.

"Where?"

"Spare bedroom."

"Jack..."

"It's my decision to make, Ennis." In the dark, Jack heard his own words like they were some magical incantation, and maybe they had the same effect on Ennis because they were moving up the stairs, then into the room. The door was always closed to save on heating and cooling, and the room smelled of must and mold, but in a way that was better, like the places they'd made due so many years, but all grown up. Jack threw the fancy quilt they'd bought for visitors- mostly Ed's sister- onto the floor and pushed Ennis down on the bed.

"Jack," Ennis breathed.

Jack was beyond caring what Ennis thought. The night had been too perfect, and this was going to happen. The fallout and ramifications were for tomorrow. That had always been Jack's philosophy and it wasn't going to fail him now, not now of all times. "Just shut up."

"No, Jack, you got to know..."

"What's that?" They were kneeling on the bed, foreheads together, both breathing so hard that their breaths mingled into a summer-hot storm between them.

"Those things I said," Ennis started, voice tight.

"Shh, not now."

"No, now. I..."

"We both said things we didn't mean, Ennis."

"That's just it. I gotta tell you... I didn't mean those things. I seen now what you wanted. Just... I wasn't right all them years to tell you... to say..." Jack could hear the tears gathering in Ennis's throat. He wanted to stop Ennis now, but he didn't. Jack knew he might never get this again. "Jack, I am so sorry. What I said..."

"Well I am not going to pretend it didn't hurt me."

Ennis grunted deep in is chest. "I know it did. I meant it to. And that's... worse. How can I? How can I make you understand that's not really how I think about you? You know I don't think of you that way, don't you?"

Jack tried to take the apology like a man, but it was like getting everything he ever wanted and just a little bit too late. He was suddenly fighting too many emotions. He pushed back on Ennis, sending them off-balance onto their sides. "I don't know." It was all Jack could say, and he felt a lump gathering in his throat against his will. "I don't know, Ennis. I don't know. I don't know how to make it all better again."

"Jack, Jack." Ennis's voice had taken on urgency. "Jack, listen to me. I don't think those things. I don't think them."

"Then why'd-" but Jack couldn't finish.

"Maybe I did, I don't know. But I don't no more. You're one of the best-"

"Just shut up-"

"Jack-"

"I can't do this Ennis. Not right now. I just..." Jack switched gears in mind and body, hand going to Ennis's zipper. "Can't we just..."

Ennis got that message loud and clear, though, because he didn't need to be asked twice, or really even once, before the rush that had been building between them all evening was screaming to be set free.

Afterwards Jack fell sound asleep, thinking that that had been better than any apology Ennis could have mustered by mouth. His dreams were full of the humming of insects on summer nights of the long-ago, but without the twinge of regret that such dreams usually brought him.

The pre-dawn was quiet and dark when Ennis called a cab. It was normally not an expense he would have allowed himself, but he'd fucked Jack in Ed-and-Jack's place, and by the light of day that'd looked wrong any way he could have looked at it. He could see he shouldn't have done it, and he just wanted to be as far away from the scene of the crime as quickly as possible. He hoped to God that Jack would understand, and that Jack could put to rights what he might need to with Ed. Since Jack hadn't really accepted his apology, Ennis had come to understand that he'd hurt Jack more deeply than he'd thought he had. Maybe Ed was best for Jack.

Ennis got back to his apartment and knew immediately that Bobby was still asleep. He fell asleep himself on the couch, even though it was well past time he should be up. He didn't know how to face the day considering everything he'd done, so he thought it would be easier if he didn't.

Jack awoke to find the bed empty. He wandered downstairs, but only found that the rest of the townhouse was similarly empty. No note was left, but Jack understood. He got the message. He sunk down on the couch and wondered if it was too early to have a beer. He'd had just one night with Ennis, and this shit, these mind games, had started up again. He couldn't let this happen. Ennis always lured him with promises and then pushed him away when he got to hoping, and hadn't the same thing happened last night? The moves were different, Ennis was doing different things, but the game was the same. Jack should have known. He wasn't even angry. He simply should have known.

But nonetheless, it was clear to Jack that things with Ed could not go on. Maybe that had been Ed's intent.

No, not too early for a beer. Jack Twist was going to leave civilization. But he also was not allowed back to his island. He was going to drown in the vast watery expanse of ocean that tempted him always with its beauty, but lured him in with depths he couldn't stand. Not too early for a beer by a long shot.


	8. Chapter 8

Jack sat on one side of the table, idly rubbing his index finger over the naked spot above his upper lip. He was not yet used to the nothingness where for so long there'd been something. Ed hadn't even mentioned it, but Jack guessed a lot of things might go unmentioned. Ed had thrown a clean set of sheets on the bed in the spare room.

"So what are we going to do about the townhouse?," Jack asked.

Ed was drawing geometric figures on a legal pad in front of him. He glanced up, then back down, and set about drawing numbers instead. Jack watched them form and recognized them as the average monthly mortgage payments, the association payments, and maintenance payments, adding up into columns.

"Do you have a place to go?," Ed asked, unimpassioned.

Jack groaned and covered his eyes.

"Just stay in the spare room until you find someplace."

Jack nodded behind his hand.

"I'll buy you out of your half of the townhouse."

Jack heard paper ripping and uncovered his eyes to see Ed placing a little yellow piece of paper, adorned with a fair figure, right on the table in front of him.

"I can't just let you do that, Ed..."

"I was going to buy this place one way or another. It was wrong of me to let you go in on it with me when... when I thought we were going to be more than we were."

Jack lifted his chin to look into Ed's eyes. Ed's nearly-black irises were earnest. Jack felt his hand reach out and snag Ed's wrist. "I thought so too, Ed. I swear I did. Don't apologize for any of it."

Ed's hand slipped down into Jack's for a moment, and they held hands, for the last time, before Ed pulled away and pointed at Jack's face. "It's nice, it makes you look younger."

Jack rubbed the spot where his 'stache used to be. "Thought I should stop hanging onto the past."

Ed shrugged and stood.

"Ed," Jack started, "thanks for being so amicable about this whole mess..."

Ed turned to look at Jack with new softness in his face, but his answer was hard. "Don't thank me yet. You're still living with me, and you know how passive aggressive I can be."

Jack wanted to smile and make it a joke, but he knew, so he didn't. He watched Ed leave the room with a sinking sense of foreboding instead.

The week that followed was rough for Jack. For starters, he didn't have a clue what to do about the situation with Ennis, but that didn't change the fact that he couldn't bring himself to change the sheets on the guest bed. If Ed noticed that the clean sheets ended up back in the linen closet, he didn't say.

Jack, meanwhile, decided it was high time he made a good investment of his own and buy a house with the money Ed was giving him for the townhouse, so he called up Ed's real estate agent and started looking. As Jack saw one horrid house after another, he began to realize that these things, like any permanent arrangement, took more time than he was born with the patience for.

Between the financial figuring (and it was lucky Jack and Ed were both educated in the field), mortgage pre-approvals, house seeing, and Ed's general air of radiating anger that stirred Jack's guilt, it was almost a full two weeks before Jack had a truly free evening to drive over to Ennis's. Even then, he was so stressed about seeing Ennis he might not have done it, except that Bobby was there and that probably meant he'd put it off too long.

Jack found himself standing in front of the door, though, unsure whether it would be worse to use his key or to knock. He had no idea how long he might have stood had not the door swung open and Bobby, garbage-bag in hand, greeted him.

"What the fuck... how long have you been out here?" Bobby eyed the hallway suspiciously. Setting the trash just outside the door instead of taking it to the dumpster, Bobby held the door open for Jack, silently inviting him inside.

"You shaved," Bobby noted without seeming to care.

"Yup," Jack answered.

"Ennis, guest!," Bobby yelled into the direction of the apartment.

Jack suddenly felt a little bit out of place. Bobby and Ennis had their little roommate situation under control, it seemed, and he wasn't really needed here by either of them. Ennis appeared from the kitchen doorway looking haggard.

Ennis eyed Jack only fleetingly and started to turn away when he was forced to do a double take. Jack knew exactly why, but Ennis didn't say anything about Jack's shave. He simply dipped back into the kitchen and returned a moment later offering a beer. It seemed they were playing friends today and not lovers. That was a part Jack had been relegated to for too long, but at the very least he knew how to play the part well.

Jack took a seat in the armchair before he asked Bobby about mundane things like school. Bobby bitched about his English teacher, bitched about the school dress code, and then bitched for the sake of bitching, or so it seemed to Jack. He nodded his head and pretended to listen to the whole thing, but secretly he was watching Ennis's body language out of the corner of his eye.

Ennis was fidgeting. He was uncomfortable. You didn't even have to know him well to see that. His face was lined with concern, though, and Jack doubted it was over Bobby's English teacher. Ennis didn't seem terribly engrossed in Bobby's stories, from which Jack gathered that he'd heard them all more than his share of turns already. Ennis had something on his mind, anyway, and it was troubling him.

When Bobby finally ran out of things to say and the room fell silent, Ennis cleared his throat. Everyone turned to him. Ennis flicked his eyes up to Jack's for a moment, then back down to where his hands were clasped between his knees. "Is, uh, everything alright with you an' Ed?" Ennis sounded timid.

It was the opening Jack needed to tell Ennis that he and Ed had broken up.

But would Ennis then think it was his fault? What answer did Ennis want to hear? Jack had had two weeks to think about the fact that Ennis had finally given him almost everything he'd asked for except for a proper goodbye. But was Jack really planning to do this thing again, to give Ennis another shot?

Jack licked his lips, stalling for time.

Back in Frederick, he'd tried some bull-riding on his daddy's ranch and with the local rodeo. There'd been some guys who liked to sit in the chute until the bull calmed down and they got their seat just right before they opened the gate to take their ride. But Jack had never been one of them. Sitting in the chute could really tire a man out. Why wait for perfection when you were just wasting the energy you needed for your eight seconds? That's how he felt now. He wasn't sure what he wanted with Ennis now that Ed was out of the picture, but Ennis del Mar's heady summer scent had sunk into his bones too long ago, and with every passing trial and tribulation it had only driven in harder and rooted deeper, threatening to pull him apart if he yanked it out.

So, this was Jack's chance. Time to get this bull out of the chute and declare his desire to make a new go of it if Ennis was willing.

Given that Jack had made that decision, he would never come to understand just why the actual words that came out of his mouth were so different from the ones in his head. He just nodded and said, "Yeah, sure. Why?"

A stricken-looking Ennis answered simply, "Uh, no reason."

The room fell as silent as the grave for a minute, Bobby nervously running a finger up and down a magazine on the coffee table.

"Bob, did you take the trash out?"

"Huh? Yeah. Or, well, I guess I left it in the hallway."

Jack saw Ennis shoot Bobby a look, but all Ennis said was, "I'll take care of it." Ennis left the apartment with too much haste.

The door barely had time to latch before Bobby scooted closer to Jack and hissed, "What the fuck?"

"What? Where'd you learn that kind of foul-"

"What'd you do?"

"What are you-"

"Did you break up with Ed?"

How did he do that? "How did you-"

"Oh my god, you did. You gotta tell him, Dad!"

"Bobby, things are a little tough right now."

"Ennis got laid off."

"What!"

"Yeah, chew on that, mister. Things are fucking tough. And you know what, I don't think he even gives a shit because he was so worried about whatever happened on your date." Bobby crossed his arms and threw himself back against the couch, clearly his sign that he was done talking and ready to begin the sulking mode of his tantrum. But he resurfaced long enough to mutter, "Don't tell him I told you, though, k?" Bobby didn't listen for the answer though.

Bobby was trusting like that. Ennis had hurt him badly once and Bobby had opened up and let Ennis right back in anyway. Jack thought back to his youth an remembered that he had once been like that as well. What had happened to that boy?

Ennis came back in the room, looking perhaps even more haggard than before- or maybe Jack was seeing him with clearer vision. But Jack wasn't feeling too well all of a sudden. He had a lot to chew on, not the least of which the reason he hadn't been able to tell Ennis that he wanted _them_ back. And the fact that his teenage son had practically just called _him_ selfish.

Jack stood and stuttered some parting words. He wished them well and went on his way. As soon as he hit the outside air he felt better again, like he could breath.

Only then did Jack realize that Ennis had been laid off and he hadn't even told his best friend. Whatever they were, they weren't really friends any more.

Bobby lay across his bed, flipping his cell phone open and closed. His mom must still be paying for it since it was still working and all. He's been expecting Kelly to call tonight, but it was getting late and his luck was running thin.

He certainly wasn't the only person down on his luck, though, so he couldn't take it too badly. His dad was newly single and seemed to be taking it kind of weirdly. Bobby remembered his dad having a mustache since Bobby'd been a little boy, and his freshly-shaven face, rounder from the weight he'd put on since it'd last been clean, looked too baby-like.

And yet, his dad's luck wasn't anything compared to Ennis's. Ennis had six weeks to find a new job. He'd been working at Laurel for forever or something, but they'd fired him because he was the only guy working there without a high school diploma when they needed to make cuts. Sucked to be him. Or the kid that depended on his income for a place to live.

Ennis wasn't doing too well aside from that, though. Bobby had gone to bed early every night this week to spare himself the sight of watching Ennis get dead drunk on the couch. Tonight, his cell phone silent, he decided he didn't have to deal with this shit any more. He didn't care who got mad at him.

His feet made no sound on the carpet. Ennis was just where he expected, slumped over on the couch drinking beer, a small army of empties just beginning to fall into formation on the coffee table. Bobby knew from experience that it'd be a veritable legion by morning. Even to a kid who'd never had a job beyond paper delivery, it didn't make sense to spend all your money on liquor when you didn't know if you were going to have a job in six weeks.

Bobby slumped down on the couch next to Ennis. "They broke up."

"They hell you talkin' 'bout?," Ennis slurred.

"Dad broke up with his boyfriend."

"'S shit. Why you tellin' me this, huh?"

Bobby shrugged. "Just thought you might want to know. In case you wanted to sober up and figure out what to do about it."

Ennis set the half-full beer bottle on the table. "What do you think I should do, huh?" His voice had an edge of hostility.

"How the hell should I know? I barely know the man." Bobby surprised himself with his own frankness, but it was the truth if he was being honest.

"Fuck," Ennis groaned.

"Whatever. It's you problem." Bobby rose back to his feet. "I just want you to try and find a new job or whatever so we aren't homeless."

Bobby staggered, exhausted, back to the bedroom. He pulled down the covers and crawled under them, giving one last glance at his cell phone. It was after midnight now, and she hadn't called tonight. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow night she would call.

If there's one thing he had learned from his father, it was that giving up didn't pay off.


	9. Chapter 9

Ennis wasn't sure how, but somehow he knew he had to make the first move. Had Jack broke up with Ed because of him? The thought followed him day and night, at times thrilling him, at others shaking him with doubt. On Saturday afternoon when he got home from work, he tested his mettle to try something new by picking up the phone and dialing Jack's number once again. Ennis was used to sitting around waiting for Jack to make the first move. This would be different.

It wasn't Jack who answered the phone, though, and Ennis felt his resolve falter. This must be Ed.

To Ed's "Hello," Ennis managed to mutter, "Can I speak to Jack Twist please?"

"One moment. Can I ask who's calling?"

Ennis felt all the air leave him as if someone'd punched him in the gut, but he sucked it all back in in time to say, sharply into the phone, "Well, can't you just tell him he has a call?"

That seemed to give Ed pause, but Ed's shock faded into a chuckle. "Well..., you must be Ennis del Mar."

Ennis said nothing.

"Jack said you could be an ornery ass."

Ennis took a deep breath. He'd been in enough verbal fights to recognize the beginnings of a slew of passive-aggressive insults from ten miles away. This could be rough. Ennis tried to remind himself there was no call to lose his temper with Ed, since he and Jack weren't anything but roommates any more.

Still, just as Ennis was steeling himself, Ed exhaled hard and said, "Aw hell" before bellowing "Jack, phone!" into the confines of a townhouse where Ennis had been only recently.

"Hello?," Jack answered.

"Hey."

"Ennis?"

"Yeah."

"Something wrong?"

"No, no. I was just thinkin'... you and me have got to talk."

Jack was silent for a moment, like he was thinking, but when he spoke he said, "What did you have in mind?"

Ennis, in fact, did have something in mind. He'd done it once, so he could do it again. "What about coffee or something? That went ok last time. You free tonight?" It was a Saturday, so it looked a little like a date, but maybe that was fine.

Jack sighed. "I have... I'm meeting someone in a couple hours, Ennis."

"Oh." So that was it. Jack'd found someone to replace Ed already, and it wasn't Ennis.

Jack seemed to pick up on Ennis's disappointment, because he added, in a conciliatory tone, "Well, maybe I could meet you after? I'm going to be out in Bowie. Hey, there's a little coffee shop up there I been to once. Little private place that has music. They have some food, as well, so we can eat there. It's called the Year of the Rabbit. How about seven thirty?"

Wow, Jack had sure come around quickly. Ennis wondered what sort of date he had if he was talking about having dinner with Ennis. Maybe... but no, Ennis shouldn't think about that. But then, it'd be just like Jack to meet someone just for sex, and then have dinner with Ennis after. Ennis felt his stomach turn.

"So?" Jack was waiting for an answer.

Ennis considered telling Jack to fuck off, but he was just tired of caring any more. In the past he probably would have said something less than civil, but he knew how things went without Jack in his world, so Ennis thought he ought to try.

"Sure," Ennis choked out around the sour taste in his mouth. "Where is it?"

"Hilltop Plaza."

"Where's that?"

"Where the TJ Maxx is."

"Oh, ok." That was about the only landmark Ennis knew in Bowie.

Ennis was there at seven fifteen, but he waited in is truck. Jack tore into the parking lot at nearly quarter of. It wasn't like Jack to be late, but Jack's car screeched into an open spot three down from Ennis's truck, and Jack jumped out in about two seconds flat. Before Ennis practically had a chance to move from his seat, Jack was walking towards his truck.

He slid out and they met on the pavement of the strip mall parking lot.

Jack turned, and Ennis followed, down the side of Outback Steakhouse and into an unobtrusive door marked "Year of the Rabbit".

The coffee shop itself was small, long and skinny and graced with all sorts of odd chairs. The guests were few and varied: a group of teenagers giggled in one corner, some middle-aged men and women were talking over a table, and a couple in their thirties were splitting a dessert. A young women with a head of curly hair was playing guitar and singing into a microphone, but if people were listening to her, the only indication was a tiny ripple of uninterested applause as she finished a song.

Jack stepped up to the counter and ordered a sandwich and a black coffee. Ennis followed suit, and they took a seat at a seat of facing couches at the other end of the long restaurant from the majority of the people. It meant they were watching the singer from nearly behind, but they were out of the way, and it suited Ennis just fine.

Ennis was already trying not to wonder how Jack had learned about this place that wasn't well advertised, which was good only in that it distracted him from wondering what Jack had been doing and what had made Jack late, but bad in that it led to all the same conclusions as those earlier wonderings. Jack seemed lost in his own thoughts, worry creasing his brow, and so they ate in silence, except once Jack stopped eating to say, "You got any idea how much college costs these days?"

Ennis shook his head 'cause he didn't. He just added that Junior was on a nearly full scholarship, an' Alma and Brad were covering what little the scholarship didn't.

"Well, be grateful," Jack muttered.

"Bobby ain't goin' to college yet," Ennis added.

"Yeah, but I'd be a fool not to be thinking about the money like he's leaving tomorrow."

Ennis shrugged, since he'd never been too good at saving much money anyway. He had an emergency fun, but he also had found himself in an emergency, job-wise.

He hadn't told Jack about that- the fact that Laurel'd given him six weeks or why. He knew there were parts of that story Jack had a right to know, but there were parts of the story between Ed and Jack that Ennis had a right to know. Two people could keep secrets just as well as one. Now that his thoughts had turned sour again, and Jack seemed once more engrossed in his own thoughts, they didn't speak any more. So much for needing to talk.

They finished their food and watched the musician, who wasn't too good but was at least trying hard, until she packed up her guitar. Jack sighed and rubbed his eyes after that.

"I'm beat. Didn't you say you wanted to talk or something?"

Ennis shrugged. Right now he was spending all his energy trying not to be angry with Jack. Talking couldn't be a good thing.

Jack nodded. "Alright, then. This was a lot of fun, though. We should do this again, but I think I'm going to call it a night."

Ennis searched Jack's words for sarcasm but didn't find any. He didn't think it'd been fun at all, but Jack seemed to have genuinely gotten something out of it. Ennis didn't know what a person could get from sitting listenin' to a bad singer for an hour, but maybe this was one of those things Jack liked.

But when Jack stood and Ennis followed him out of the store, Ennis felt the same sinking feeling he'd felt after that good singer downtown in D.C.- like he didn't want the night to be over. Although a part of him was sick of Jack, of whatever Jack had done earlier this evening. Probably that's why Jack was too tired to hang out with Ennis, because he'd been out getting some anonymous fuck before they'd had sandwiches and coffee. How come that was good enough for him and Ennis wasn't? Jack was saying something to him, saying goodnight, but Ennis couldn't even hear Jack over the growling frustration bubbling up into his own ears. How come he was never good enough?

"Well, goodnight." Jack said again at Ennis's continued silence. When Ennis said nothing, Jack just waved and walked away.

From somewhere deep inside Ennis needed an answer, and he needed for Jack to not go, to not do this silent parting where nothing was solved yet again. "Where'd you go?"

"Huh?" Jack turned around.

"Where were you? Before here." Ennis heard the accusatory, dangerous edge in his voice.

Jack took a step back towards where Ennis was standing by his truck door. Ennis could tell Jack was measuring his words out carefully when he said, "What are you implying?"

"You know damn well what I'm implying," Ennis growled.

Jack groaned, turned on his heel, and started walking away even quicker. Ennis felt a frantic need to pull Jack back and have the fight out loud. He'd spoken because he didn't want Jack to leave this way, but it was just driving him away even faster.

"Jack," Ennis called. "Jack!"

Jack spun around again, but the look in his eyes wasn't anger. It was pity. He met Ennis's eyes as clear as day in the orange street-light glow. Suddenly he was walking towards Ennis even faster than he'd walked away, until he was right there, and a finger flew up into Ennis's face as Jack lashed out.

"You want to know where I was?"

"Yup." Ennis spit on the ground.

"I was meeting with my fuckin' real estate agent. He had a house to show me. An' _you_ are a grade A asshole."

Ennis reeled, feeling slapped. He'd done it again. He'd already apologized once for the things he'd said to Jack during their last argument, and here he was implying the same things all over again. Maybe he deserved the pity he was seeing in Jack's eyes.

"Ed and I broke up," Jack continued, probably knowing he wasn't sharing a revelation by now. "We broke up before, before you and I slept together, if it matters to you."

Jack's voice had turned suddenly very tender, and Ennis didn't have a clue why, considering that Jack ought to be mad as hellfire at him right now. But instead he was casting those pity-gazes and talking low. Ennis understood why when the winter wind blew and traced out in cold lines down his face the tears he hadn't known had been there.

"So I'm moving out. I'm looking to buy a house. I've always liked Bowie, but Christ these houses are expensive. I really like the one I saw today, but three hundred and eighty thousand for a one-story house built forty years ago? It makes me want to move to Missouri or something," Jack laughed, trying to lighten the mood. He was clearly a little shaken up by Ennis's tears. Ennis felt himself shake a little bit. He didn't trust himself with words, so he just nodded.

"And then there's Bobby's college," Jack shrugged. "I guess Lureen and I might split that or something. But we haven't talked about it and we need to. Anyway, right now I'm camped out in Ed's guest room dealing with his sour ass treating me like the relative who wouldn't leave or something. So I'm eager to buy someplace. Plus I've been avoiding him so I didn't do my laundry and I'm wearing dirty underwear. You now know every deep and dark secret I have at the moment, Ennis."

"How'd you know about this place," Ennis asked, voice shaky, nodding his head in the direction of the Rabbit.

"That. Yeah, a guy I slept with about six years ago played a gig there way back when." Jack shrugged.

Ennis winced.

"Look, I can't undo the past for you Ennis. And you can't undo it for me either."

Ennis shuffled his feet. "Well, I... I been keepin' some secrets too, an' it's only fair, I guess, maybe I should tell you mine."

"Alright," Jack smiled lightly. "But how about we do that in the car. It's freezin' out here. Besides, maybe I can drive you by that house, an' you can tell me what you think."

"Sounds good," Ennis answered, and it really, truly did. No one in the world valued his opinion like Jack did. Ennis knew that Jack's house purchase, the man's entire future, was really in his own hands. He hadn't been too careful with that in the past, but maybe, knowing how Jack valued his opinion, he ought to be a little more careful about how he used it.


	10. Chapter 10

"Looks good," Ennis said noncommittally, looking at the brick facing of the rambler from the quiet, suburban street.

Jack reached over the back seat and handed Ennis a little info packet stating it had three bedrooms and two baths and was built in 1967. "It's about the tenth place I've seen, and it's not cheap, but I like this neighborhood the best, and the house is nice."

Ennis gazed out of the car window at the street sign, some street name that started with a B just like every other street in this winding part of town. Ennis knew that Bowie was a mixed bag. You got rows of quiet streets all starting with the same letter, full of happy families and their happy, well-trained dogs and well-manicured lawns. Trash cans were never out on the wrong day, newspapers were never left during vacations, and the lawn never went unmowed. The city saw to it. At the same time, the city had a reputation for being tolerant. People were too busy cuttin' their lawns and hiding their trash cans to give each other any hassle. If two gay men were to buy a house with a teenage boy in the B Section, the most hassle they would probably end up with is shoveling snow and mowing grass for neighbors. There was a reason a rambler in this part of the county went for way too damn much. The asking price on the piece of paper did reinforce that idea, too, at three hundred and eighty thousand.

"The appliances are newer," Jack continued. "It's got a patio, a shed..."

Ennis wondered offhand when he'd assumed he was moving in with Jack. Jack hadn't said any such thing, and it wasn't something Ennis had thought he's wanted himself.

"Carpeting... Ennis, are you even listening to me?"

"Huh?" Ennis looked over at Jack and saw the tender, forgiving look the man was giving him in the streetlight, but there was something else mixed in. Fear?

"Well," Jack said, "maybe I'll bring you back with the agent during the day to see the inside."

"Don't think I can get off during the day."

The air hung heavy. The car engine hummed and the heater strained against the winter night when Jack cleared his throat, but didn't say anything.

"Guess I owe you those secrets now, huh?," Ennis asked.

"Now's good." Jack ran his finger around the steering wheel.

"Well, I got laid off at work. They gave me six weeks to find a new job."

Jack nodded. "Bobby might have said some little thing about it."

Ennis wasn't even a little bit surprised about that.

"He said it was something about not finishing high school?"

Ennis shook his head. "That's what I told him. Want him to finish school and all, and what with his tendency to not back down from a fight..."

Jack was watching him carefully. "You get in a fight, Ennis?"

Ennis squirmed uncomfortably under Jack's knowing gaze. "Well..."

"Someone say something?"

Jack knew him too well. "He just... just asked me. You know?"

Jack was silent for a long time. When he spoke, it was clearly from a deep place he never even let Ennis see, his voice wavering a little bit. "You know... you can't just punch people when they ask questions."

"Now Jack, I'm not ready for that. Old dog, you know."

"Not so old. Are you planning to be ready? Ready to come out, someday?" Jack's eyes met Ennis's and didn't shy away.

Ennis shrugged and broke the stare first. When he finally spoke, all he said was, "Depends."

"On what?"

"Well, on whether I got a job, maybe for one. And a place to live. I got priorities, Jack. And on, well, on why I'd want to do such a foolish thing."

"Foolish. What's that mean?" Jack sounded defensive.

"I just mean," Ennis started, searching for words he couldn't find. "I just mean it'd be pretty useless. I mean, I don't give a crap what sort of person I like because I don't intend to go seeing any of them."

"So your plan is to stay single and celibate the rest of your life, Ennis?"

Ennis cleared his throat and looked out the passenger-side window, not prepared to have this conversation.

"Is that what you want from me, too? Just to be your friend, and not ever to be with another guy? That's what you have in mind? You can't handle being gay so I'm supposed to pretend _I'm_ not?"

"Jack..."

"Ennis, what the hell do you want from me? I can't read your mind. Tell me what you want and I'll tell you what I can give. We're just going to have to try to meet each other in the middle or something, because I am not prepare to enter the priesthood just yet. What is it you want?"

Ennis shook his head, staring out into the dark night and searching for the right words, but finding nothing but frustrated silence inside of his head. He didn't even know what he needed and wanted well enough to tell Jack. Or maybe he did, but those were words he could not let slip. What kind of man would he be then? He didn't even have any money to put towards the down payment.

Still, Jack knew Ennis too well. They sat in silence for a good five minutes, Ennis's mind running on to how much gas they were killing, when Jack spoke softly.

"Remember that day up in my old man's hay loft?"

Ennis remembered it for sure. They'd spent more than one day up there, but Ennis knew just which one Jack was referring to. Jack, sporting a nasty shiner, had hung his legs off the edge and insisted for hours that a horse had kicked him in the face. Everyone knew that wasn't a likely story, or he'd have come away with much worse than a black eye. After hours of talking about school and dogs and horses and weather, and doing things that didn't involve talking, Ennis had finally leaned a shoulder up against Jack's own and said, "You know, don't matter how you got it. Nothing could make me think no less of you. So maybe you ran into some pole or something. Just don't like you lying to me."

It'd been about sunset at the time, and Ennis could still remember the way the orange light fell like gold on Jack's sweaty hair as he'd turned to Ennis and said after a long time that his father'd caught him unawares coming home after curfew. Jack was almost as tall as his father then- junior year- and he couldn't understand why he hadn't fought back or something.

Ennis just held him, not knowing what to say. He hadn't ever been in a situation like that, and he didn't know what Jack expected of him. After some time, he said, "Well, least all your horses are behaving."

Jack'd laughed until he snorted, throwing hay at Ennis, Ennis throwing some back, wrestling and breaking apart the dry flakes.

Ennis returned to the here and now, focusing on Jack, his hair a copper-gold in the orange street light glow. Jack had a little smile playing around his eyes and lips as he said gently, "Nothing could make me think less of you, Ennis. I just don't like you hiding from me. Like you think I don't already know. But I'm done making your decisions for you. You've got to say, Ennis. That's all."

Ennis blinked rapidly away from Jack, feeling his heart filling, and maybe his eyes too, at the emotions filling up the car in the night. He closed his eyes and turned away from Jack. Seconds turned into minutes, and Ennis listened to the engine and the sound of his own breathing. Finally he just loosened his lips the tiniest bit and said just exactly what he was feeling, maybe the biggest emotion he'd felt in a long time, and not something he'd ever admitted to anyone. Those three little words came out of his mouth sounding like an unfamiliar voice. "I'm scared, Jack."

Jack grasped his hand, clenching their fists together with a ferocious strength that hurt Ennis's knuckles, but he didn't dare try to dislodge that hand. He kept his head turned towards the window and opened his eyes, watching the frost gathering at the edges of the glass.

Jack squeezed more tightly, as if that were possible, and all he said was, "Then better not to be alone, you think?"

"But, but what about my girls?" Ennis turned towards Jack again. "What'm I gonna tell them?"

"You're going to have to figure that out. But at least I've been through it, right?" Jack tilted his head and made those pleading eyes that made Ennis smile and cringe at the same time. "You never get to stop telling people. People always seem to care, always seem to be asking, though God knows why, since it ain't exactly their business."

Jack's squeeze eased up a little bit, but his hand stayed there, holding Ennis' own firm. "So, what do you say? What if I called my real estate agent and got a showing at night? Would you be available?"

Ennis shook his head, but the words that came out of his mouth were, "Don't know that I can do this, but I guess..."

"You won't be financially obligated, so you can go back to your shit-hole any time you like. But my son is staying with me. You can't have him."

Ennis cracked a little smile. "Good. Don't want him anyways."

Jack laughed.

But Ennis wasn't quite done with the conversation. He had so many reservations, and there was so much they had never said or resolved. This was what he wanted, but he was scared shitless, and he could feel Jack trembling where their hands connected.

"Jack," Ennis started, "I still feel like we got some things to talk about."

"Yeah, we probably do," sighed Jack.

"I just don't know. You think maybe we're rushing into this thing?"

Jack turned to face him, disengaging their hands to rest his right palm along Ennis's cheek. Ennis, despite his resolution not to outside where they could be seen, by people who might be their future neighbors no less, leaned into the touch.

"Rushing," Jack said, "has always worked out pretty well for us before."

Ennis was shaking his head in protest, but Jack cut him off, holding his head firm.

"But this," Jack leaned in close, "has been twenty years in the making, and is the furthest damned thing..." He left a soft kiss against Ennis's lips, but Ennis was too slow to react, lost in the hum of Jack's winter-nighttime voice that was like the glow of warm firelight. "...From too fast...," Jack continued and then laid another kiss on Ennis's lips, this time Ennis moving to respond, "... I know of." Jack leaned in all the way, but Ennis needed no encouragement to meet his warm lips in the cool night. They collided with freight-train force, and were scrambling at seat belts before Ennis broke away, both of their chests heaving.

Ennis didn't move far, though, resting the side of his head against Jack's soft hair. Jack slipped an arm around him, and Ennis held Jack close as well. Jack turned just enough so his lips were brushing Ennis's ear, and Ennis heard him whisper close, "I'm frightened half to death, you know that? That I'll screw this up or something. So you aren't alone in that, anyway."

Ennis pulled him closer before pushing Jack away, scanning the darkness quickly for signs of unwanted life, and wiping his sweaty palms on his suddenly too-tight jeans.

Jack noticed and swallowed hard himself before silently putting the car into gear and pulling away.

There was an immediate flurry of activity when they entered the apartment. Bobby was laying on the couch watching a silent TV, talking on his cell phone. Jack went straight to the linen closet and started pulling out sheets and throwing them into the bedroom. Ennis disappeared into there, and Jack grabbed some more and threw them at Bobby.

"Hey! Hold on a minute, my dad's being stupid." Bobby cupped a hand over the phone receiver and pinned Jack with a glare. "What the hell, Dad?"

"Heck, and you're sleeping on the couch tonight."

"What?"

"Tell your girlfriend you'll call her back in a few."

"_She's not my girlfriend_," Bobby hissed.

"Robert Cha-"

"Jesus."

"You wish. Come on."

"Alright, alright. Kelly? I gotta go. Can I call you back in a few? Alright, 'night." Bobby slammed his flip phone and sat up. "Ok, what's up already?"

"You're sleeping on the couch. Go get your bedclothes or whatever."

"What? Why?"

Jack put his hands on his hips and didn't say anything, but Bobby wasn't stupid, though his grades weren't straight A's by a long shot.

"Eeeeew. Gross. Dad!"

"Well, you can come in and get your pajamas later if you like..."

Bobby muttered under his breath as he marched to the bedroom. Jack followed, finding Ennis nearly done changing the sheets.

Jack followed Bobby back to the living room. Bobby threw down his night clothes and slumped onto the couch. "Come on, let's talk," Jack said, sitting down next to Bobby.

"This sucks," Bobby growled.

"It's not forever."

"So it's what? One night? That sucks more."

Jack sighed and leaned back. "What if we move?"

"Whatever. Not like I have a say."

"Well, I want you to know we care what you think about it."

"Yeah, right."

"No, it's true."

Bobby didn't answer, but Jack put his arm around his teenage son. "When you were little, I wanted to give you the world, you know? Well, I still do, but I don't have that kind of money. Still, what if I could give you your own bedroom? That's a start right?"

Bobby shrugged.

"What do you think of Ennis? You like him, right?"

"Sure."

"What if he were to move in with us?"

That finally caught Bobby's attention, and he looked up at his father. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah. I think he and I are going to try and make a go of it. How does that sit with you? We want to do right by you, you understand, since what happens to us happens to you, too."

Bobby shrugged, and Jack could feel that he was putting too much weight on Bobby's shoulders. He took his arm back from around Bobby and asked, "Well, would you at least go and see the house with us and tell us whether you like it?"

"I guess."

"Alright. I'm going to hit the hay. Go talk to your girlfriend." Jack stood.

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Yeah, right," Jack winked, and walked to the bedroom with a bounce in his step he hadn't had since he'd left on an airplane for college so many years ago.


	11. Chapter 11

When Jack had said it had carpeting, Ennis remembered that he hadn't specified what kind of carpeting. The multicolored brown shag underfoot hearkened back to an earlier era. "Newer appliances," he'd said. Newer than what, the Reagan administration? And even then, only just barely. Still, Ennis couldn't say any better for his own apartment.

Besides, Jack looked like a kid in a candy store. Ennis supposed it was him that'd done that, though, not the house. They'd shown up in one car in front of The Year of the Rabbit, where they'd picked up Ennis's truck, abandoned in haste the night before, and caravaned to 'The House', as it was coming to be called. Bobby got to drive the truck, while Ennis sat in the passenger seat. He didn't have his learner's permit yet, so Jack put up a little fuss, but Ennis mostly ignored him. Neither Jack nor Ennis had learned to drive on learner's permits, after all.

They got the The House around seven at night and met the real estate agent, a broad-shouldered man who claimed to have played minor-league baseball. His card proudly proclaimed that he "would go to bat for you," and Ennis was immediately put off by the cheesy sales tactic, but Jack and this man, Dale, seemed to get along alright.

"So, this is your friend?" Dale ask, jutting out a tanned hand towards Ennis.

"Roommate," Jack hesitantly supplied, though his grin said Ennis was much more.

Ennis mumbled a hello and shook Dale's hand, but made a mental note that he and Jack should discuss things like this, what they should call each other to other people. He was alright with the roommate deal right now, but with Bobby around, he didn't think it would hold up for half an hour.

Just like at school. He hadn't told Jack that whole story, but somehow he felt that Jack knew there was more to it. That's why Ennis had had to lie to Bobby, after all. Ennis had been working with some of the other custodial staff when Bobby had come over, wearin' his bad-boy attitude like it was a shirt, which he tended to do around school, and announced, "Ms. Barns wants to have a parent-teacher conference next week."

Ennis had stopped his work. The other guys had followed suit, wondering why this brash kid was talking to them, probably.

"Do you think you could do it? I mean, is that allowed?"

"Dunno," Ennis mumbled, trying to signal Bobby to disappear with his mind and the glare of his eye.

But either his message was not getting through, or else, just as likely, it was encouraging Bobby, because Bobby drilled on. "Well shit, it should be allowed. And if it's not, I'm going to get it allowed or whatever."

"Think they'd want to talk to your dad." Ennis shook his head and went back to working on the duct they were fixing, trying not to notice the eyes of the two men he was working with boring into him.

"Whatever. You're already here and I'm living with you." Ennis just ignored Bobby, but that encouraged him further, as he acquired a mischievous grin. "Unless you just wanted me to lure Dad down to your work."

The look Ennis shot at Bobby then was probably dangerous, but Bobby seemed to get the message.

"Alright, alright. Relax, man. Just sayin'. See you later, pimp." And then he was gone. Bobby was so good at pushing every button Ennis had, but now he'd done it in public and in front of people Ennis worked with and respected.

Ennis had tried to go about his day like usual, pretending like nothing had happened, but he'd seen the custodians whispering amongst each other, heard them quiet down when he would walk their way. By the next day it had seemed like everyone in the school was whispering about him. Every time someone had looked his way, he'd had to repress the urge to shout, "what the fuck are you looking at?" Finally, when Heriberto had asked him over lunch, in a hushed and playful and maybe even mocking tone, "Ennis, are you, you know...," and dangled a wrist, from Ennis's point of view the man had been asking for what he'd got.

And maybe Ennis had been asking for what he'd got in return as well. At the very least, he was determined not to take it out on Bobby. After all, it was Ennis who'd lost his cool, not Bobby. He'd gone down the road of taking out his fears on Bobby once before, at that Denny's so long ago. So he'd told Bobby they'd laid him off, and told Jack about the fight, and at night he tried to tell himself he'd do differently if he had it to do again. He couldn't just fire off shots at people. It'd landed him in a tight spot financially and in terms of his pride- having to depend on other people, and that was worse than having a wrist dangled at you here and there.

Back in the here and now, Ennis was carefully surveying the water heater, while Jack had his head stuck deep in the fridge as if he might find something there. Bobby'd ran upstairs first thing, and he came back down, calling, "I know which bedroom's mine," with a cat-like grin. Dale watched it all with amusement.

"Oh no you don't. The one with the bathroom is ours," Jack answered, smiling.

Shit, Ennis thought. This time it was Jack. The house had three bedrooms, right?

Dale's grin slipped.

"Aww, how come you get all the good stuff? And I gotta sleep on couches and in _normal_ bedrooms and crap?"

"Because you're not paying the mortgage. Here, go back upstairs. Come on, Ennis, you gotta see the upstairs."

Ennis nodded and mumbled, following Jack and Bobby, with Dale bringing up the rear wearing a hesitant, polite smile.

At the top of the stairs, Bobby was the one who led the way into the master bedroom and straight into the master bath. It wasn't anything to write home about, but Ennis stood in the doorway and nodded with approval. Jack looked out the window at the view down on the main street below.

"Roommates, huh?," Dale laughed.

Jack looked up and smiled a little at Dale, answering only, "I didn't say what we did in our room."

Dale laughed again, his salesman smile back in place, and it was plain to Ennis that what'd caught him off guard was being lied to, not selling the house to a couple of gay men. That was a new thought to Ennis. Maybe some people put stock in the truth. He wasn't sure what to do with that information, though, so he tucked it away and went off to see what Bobby found so interesting in the bathroom. Not much, it turned out. Just a bathroom. Jack pointed out the nice size of the closet, but by now Bobby had actually decided which of the other two rooms he wanted, and he was making it known. He wanted to be treated like an adult, or at least he played the bad ass teenager at school, but sometimes he wasn't more than a little kid.

Jack and Ennis followed down the little hallway to where Bobby was standing in a bedroom explaining how it had to be his because of something to do with the sunlight and the ceiling fan and who knows what. No one was really listening to him. Jack went to the window again, seeing who could see in his teenage son's room, while Ennis opened the closet and peered out into the hallway to know what views it gave of the other bedrooms- his and Jack's, and the one Jack had suggested his girls could stay in if they ever came for a visit. The odds of that seemed slim to none to Ennis right now, but even so, neither was a room he wanted Bobby in. They'd just have to shut the doors, though, because the upstairs was small.

Ennis thought for a moment about sound as well, but what could they do about that? When he and Alma had been married, Alma always used to ask him if the girls were asleep before they got up to any sex.. He guessed that was something all parents had to worry about. The thought made Ennis squirm with discomfort, but if this was going to be his home, he guessed he'd have to figure something out. After all, he was probably more put off by the idea than was Bobby, and hadn't him and Jack gone at it like a couple of wild animals in Ennis's apartment last night, with Bobby just down the hall? Somehow that was different, even though those rooms shared a wall as well, and Ennis didn't know just why.

There was one more bedroom to check out. After that, they went back downstairs. It was completely dark outside and the inside lights were warm and homey. Dale was running around turning more lights on. None of them had fully explored the downstairs yet. The kitchen was ran most of the length of the back of the house, and had a laundry room off one side, near the door to the garage. The water heater and circuit breaker was in a corner of the laundry room. The kitchen cabinets were medium-wood, and the floors white linoleum with some inset beige pattern. The eat-in part of the kitchen had a sliding glass door that went right out onto the patio. Facing that was the hallway that went to the front door.

On the garage side of the house was a little sitting room or whatever those formal-type rooms were supposed to be called, whereas the other side had a dining room and a living room. All three of those rooms had that same dark brown shag. The stairs went up right next to the door, on its right side.

Standing in the kitchen, Ennis could feel it. The place was small, and it wasn't new, and it wasn't like Jack's shiny townhouse or as big as that fancy place Bobby's mother had, but it was a place that wanted to be a home, and he could see himself having just this kind of home. He hadn't never imagined having a home with a man, and he didn't know that they had enough furniture between them to cover all the rooms, but standing in the front hallway to see Jack peering out the sliding glass doors, and now Bobby looking into the fridge (Ennis stopping to wonder what the hell it was with these Twist men and their strange need to make sure there wasn't no food hiding nowhere), Ennis could finally see this happening.

"You wanna see outside?" Jack asked.

Ennis nodded a little.

"Bobby?"

"No thanks, I'll...," he looked around awkwardly.

"Ok," Jack said, not waiting to see what excuse he came up with.

Dale smiled a little, probably smelling money in the air, as Ennis and Jack stepped out onto the patio on the unseasonably warm winter night.

"Well?" Jack asked.

Ennis walked around a bit, noticing that the patio was large and smooth. The yard was surrounded by a high-quality six-foot privacy fence that suited him fine. The shed was a large yellow structure off in one corner. The other corner was home to a large willow tree, bare in this late season, but probably soft and private when it had leaves. The neighboring yard to the back had a row of hardwood trees growing along the fence line. Ennis approved of that as well. The neighborhood was quiet from here, lit only by the glow from their sliding glass door.

_Their_ sliding glass door. Ennis felt his heart catch in his throat, then beat faster. His groin throbbed and came to some half-attention, and he made like he was inspecting the fence behind the garage.

"The previous owners had an in-ground pool they buried," Jack added, slowly making his way over to Ennis. "And thank God, too. I bet they are a bitch to take care of."

Ennis nodded, but found he was starved for words, scared and dizzy and excited by this moment.

"Do you like it?," Jack asked, more direct this time.

Ennis checked once more to make sure they were in the shaft of shadow that projected into this corner of the small yard, invisible from the sliding glass door, and then reached out and pulled Jack into a hug, He hoped it sufficed as his answer. He tucked his man's cheek against his own and floundered for words, finding only, "Jack, I..." before giving up.

Jack's own warm embrace was Ennis's reward for the attempt, though. They held each other close and staved off the cold until Jack shook him slightly, whispering only, "I knew you would. Didn't I tell you? I knew you would."

Ennis laughed a little, blowing puffs of warm air against Jack's skin. Jack answered the laughter with a giddy, childish giggle of his own, and before either man knew exactly when laughter had turned into more, Jack had pinned Ennis up against the privacy fence and was stealing Ennis laughter with his own lips. Jack's arms roamed frantically under Ennis's open jacket, looking for a place to hold firm, and Ennis let Jack hold onto him however Jack thought best. They were starting something new for both of them.

"Oh, gross, _come on_!"

Ennis pushed Jack off with a gentle push, nothing with real force or meaning, and Jack chuckled against Ennis's cheek. Ennis peered over Jack's shoulder to see Bobby standing out in the yard, not looking really disgusted so much as annoyed.

Jack, his chest heaving, spouts of steam escaping his mouth into the air, asked like Bobby hadn't just caught them necking like teenagers, "What do you think of the house?"

And Bobby, answering like catching your dad making out in the back yard with a man was nothing new, said, "Yeah, it's cool. I like it."

"Alright then. Where's Dale? I think we've got an an offer to make."


	12. Chapter 12

Ennis came through the door and flung his jacket onto the arm of his old sofa that was in the front room now and had been his customary place to keep the coat since he'd moved fully out of his apartment. Alma'd always made him hang it up in the hall closet. Jack hadn't seen fit to pick a battle over the jacket slung on the couch, so Ennis kept doing it. Could be this would work out.

"How'd it go?" Jack was already home, and Ennis could smell something cooking.

"Mmm," Ennis said, trying to conceal a smile as he went back to the kitchen. "What are you making?"

"Just Hamburger Helper." Jack was sitting at the kitchen table paying the bills. "Did you want green beans or peas?"

"Whatever."

"Bobby should be home any minute. He has his lacrosse tryout."

Ennis nodded. He knew that already. They'd had to arrange a carpool for Bobby today. He'd taken to riding in with Ennis, but that wasn't going to work long. Jack was going to have to start taking him soon, but he'd gotten his learner's permit now and just as soon as they could they would get him a car and a license. No buses came out here to take him to school because, as far as the school was concerned, he still lived with his mom in Laurel. Bobby didn't want to change school again so soon after finally making some friends, and Jack wasn't going to force him. Lureen'd given her ok to that plan, so she would just forward anything for Bobby on to Jack's house.

But today, Ennis couldn't drive Bobby home, because Ennis had an interview at Bowie High School.

"So?" Jack was looking at him with prying eyes.

Ennis felt his smile crack. "I got it. My boss at Laurel made like I just had a personal problem with one employee, and so it isn't even going on my record as them firing me, but just as a transfer to Bowie."

Jack answered with a splitting grin over the bills. "No shit."

"Easier all over, I think."

"You could practically walk to work."

"Just might do that," Ennis joked.

They smiled at each other a moment too long, and Ennis knew he was thinking that everything felt like it was working out too well, like maybe this was going to come crashing down, but for this moment, smiling and looking in Jack's eyes with Jack smiling, they were separate from the world. It was beginning to feel like no matter what happened outside, as long as they were in this house, nothing could ever touch them.

An egg timer rang in the kitchen, and Jack swore and jumped up, moving about the stove, wrestling with a can opener and a can of some green vegetable.

The door swung open and Bobby threw his backpack down next to the front door.

"Dinner in five minutes," Jack shouted.

Bobby ran upstairs without a word.

"Ennis, could you..."

Ennis anticipated Jack's meaning, and started moving the bills and other papers off the table in the most organized sense he could see, doing the first thing that came to him and dropping them into the fourth chair at the kitchen table. It was good enough.

Jack, finally having released the green vegetables to heat in a pot, came back over and produced from the pile a thick, white envelope addressed in scripted writing. "This came for you today." He passed it over to Ennis. "From your people," Jack added without need. After all, Ennis could read the return address.

Ennis sat in his usual seat, facing the sliding glass doors, and opened the fine envelope, reading the contents.

"What is it?," Jack asked.

"Amy," Ennis answered. "Little Amy's gettin' married."

_Things had gone from bad to worse around the del Mar home. K.E. got laid off, and went from low-paying to low-paying job. He didn't have any education or skills to speak of, and times were bad. A couple years ago, Lanie'd gotten pregnant with her ex who was long gone, and the baby had made tight ends tighter. They'd hung on as long as they could, but Ennis was working two jobs now, and absent from school a lot. Absent from Jack a lot too. Still, it was rough going with four mouths to feed. Lanie had found a job at a bar that brought in good tips, but that only added day care expenses to the increasing bankroll._

Ennis would never to this day know where he'd gotten either the courage or presumption to volunteer Jack for the job, to claim he'd work for no wages into the long evenings alone in the del Mar trailer, but somehow Lanie'd trusted Ennis's word and his friend. Jack, Ennis remembered, had not been angry about the presumption at all, but thrilled, tickled pink. Ennis had to leave school soon thereafter and take over days babysitting. Jack came over after school, and there was an hour, just them: Jack, Ennis, and three-year-old Amy, before Ennis left for his evening job at a gas station. K.E. worked just about all the time.

Jack's pay was that he could help himself to any food or drink in the del Mar household. After he put Amy to bed, he'd flop back on Ennis's ragged old cot where no one could see and pop open a beer, just enjoying living in Ennis's space, breathing in the smells of Ennis's family.

Sometimes when Amy cried he rocked her and cooed to her like his mom did when he was little and imagined that she wasn't just Ennis's niece, but their niece, his niece, his Amy. He would run his fingers through her feather-soft blonde hair and wonder if it would get darker when she got older or still be this light. He'd look into her baby blues and wonder if they would turn green like her mama's _eyes. But most of all he imagined he'd be there to see if it happened, but it was never meant to be._

One night Jack remembered fondly, Lanie, Ennis, and K.E.'d all come home very nearly the same time. The excitement brought Amy running out of bed, but not into her mama's arms, no, into Jack's. He carried her outside in her pink nightgown to see the crowd, and Lanie'd decided she could stay up late. Chairs had been set up around the only late-night light source they had- the bug zapper. Beers and lemonades were passed around, and they drank and talked about everything under the sun, Amy fast asleep against Jack's chest, until all of the adults' heads were dropping as well. Jack's own family was quiet and unhappy and never did things like this. Ennis's were always a day late and a dollar short, but they seemed hell-bent on enjoying the journey. Jack loved this, and he loved them. He wished he could move in here and never leave.

He fell asleep with his chin tucked in Amy's nest of golden curls that were just a substitute for her uncle's, and when Jack awoke to the snap of what must have been the mother of all moths, eaten by the purple fire, he felt something else. Looking down he saw that sometime in Jack's sleep, probably in Ennis's sleep too, Ennis, from the next chair over, had taken Jack's hand. They were holding hands in the purple gleam. Jack felt his heart well up.

He looked across the circle and saw a glint, and knew Lanie was awake, and watching him. She was seeing, and she must be knowing. He felt the weight of Amy on him and suddenly it felt crushing. Would Lanie take this from him? She couldn't, right? She wouldn't.

Jack squeezed Ennis's hand in panic, and Ennis woke up, jerking the hand away as if touched by fire. He cleared his throat and said he was going to bed, lumbering off without a goodbye. Jack watched him go, but Ennis never turned around. Lanie took a sleeping Amy silently from Jack's arms and followed Ennis in.

Jack tried and tried to think that he was reading too much into one simple evening, that nothing could mar the otherworldly pleasure of their oddly-lit fire ring, but Ennis quit his job after that to take care of Amy full-time. Jack graduated a month later and went off to college, and that was simply that.

Jack nearly said, "My Amy?," but spending a few months with someone doesn't make her belong to you. "Your Amy? But she ain't old enough."

"Older than we were when we met," Ennis said, the implications unspoken and unwelcome on the heels of Jack's memories.

"Are you gonna go?" Jack snatched the invitation away from Ennis to read it.

"I don't know. I ain't seen Lanie or K.E. and his wife since I went up there after I divorced Alma."

"Did you see Amy then?," Jack asked, not sure why he cared.

"Yeah. She was still a kid. Younger than Bobby, though maybe not by much, at the time."

"She still have light blonde hair?" Jack wished he could make the questions stop coming out of his mouth.

Ennis nodded. "But it's straightened some. And can you believe her eyes turned green? 'Bout when she was ten or so. Who would've thought?"

Jack walked back to the stove to stir the peas. They were starting to boil, so he scooped them onto plates, wishing he could yell up for Bobby, but finding his words stuck in his throat. He'd never wanted kids of any kind at all, until he'd met Amy. She'd made him think about changing his mind. And when he'd left for college and Ennis's told him good riddance and that he'd be married with kids when Jack got back (and no lie there), it'd been Amy he'd been driving at when he'd proposed to Lureen. He'd got Bobby, who was Bobby and not Amy, but just as good. And his, all his to do with as he wanted and to never ever let go and to always know the hair and eye color of, and who was living with him now, and who wouldn't ever get away no matter how hard he tried.

That thought helped him find his voice. "Bobby, dinner!" Jack set the plates down on the table in two trips.

"Well I think you should go, Ennis. Especially if you haven't been up there in, what is that, seven, eight years?"

"Go where?," Bobby asked, sitting down and not even listening for the answer over his complete focus on his food.

"Ennis's niece is getting married," Jack answered.

"Well, it says 'and guest'", Ennis mumbled.

"I'm sure you don't have to bring anyone."

"They probably think I'm seeing someone."

"You are." Jack pointed his fork at himself and winked.

Ennis smiled a little.

Bobby was already done with his first plate of food and helping himself to seconds.

"Just, well," Ennis started, looking nervous. "People ever bring friends to weddings?"

"My mom brought me to a wedding once," Bobby offered. "I was her date," he added with a smile.

Jack smiled across the table at his son, just now real glad to have him in the same house for the very first time since he'd divorced Lureen when Bobby was practically a baby- little Amy's age, just three years old. He'd wanted a child, but he hadn't wanted a wife, and he guessed he'd gone about the wrong way getting the former by involving the latter.

"Well, who even cares if they do," Ennis huffed. "They don't like it..." Ennis looked conflicted, and he wasn't touching his food.

"Ennis," Jack started, softly. "You know Lanie already knows, right? And if Lanie knows, K.E. probably knows, and he probably told his wife. It wouldn't be any news."

Ennis met Jack's eyes.

"All the same," Jack continued, "if you're going to ask me to go with you, I don't think that's a great idea. As I recall, when Lanie found out, I wasn't required to babysit Amy any more."

Ennis cleared his throat, and Bobby stopped chewing, looking up, sensing somehow that something important was happening. Ennis pushed some peas around his plate than dropped his fork, rearranging his knife and napkin, picked up his fork again, and cleared his throat again. "Ummm."

"What?"

"It wasn't... it weren't..." Ennis coughed and made a face. "Look, see, Lanie loved you, and K.E. thought you were pretty good for me, loosen me up some," the corner of Ennis's mouth rose at this inappropriate time, but straightened again before he went on. "It was... me that didn't want you to see Amy no more."

"You..." It was all Jack got out before he was opening up the front door and heading out into the February night.


	13. Chapter 13

Jack wasn't sure how long he walked, and he wasn't keeping track of where he was going. He tried not to think about too much just now, but wasn't too successful. He thought about the past, but that was like a rut he couldn't get his mind out of.

He was shaken back to the present time by a dog barking. He looked up to see a middle-aged blonde woman, her hair hanging in a tight, short ponytail, trying to corral two feisty, large, black dogs who were more interested in Jack than anything else right now.

"Hey there," he said to the dog.

"Sorry," the woman said.

"No problem," he smiled.

She pulled with all her might and continued around the block at a fast pace. He watched her go, her warm black fleece clothing making her a close match to the dogs.

Suddenly, pulled from his swirling thoughts, Jack decided just to go on home. The troubles in his head could not be solved by roaming the streets.

Walking up the driveway, Jack stopped at the sight of Ennis sitting dejectedly on the front step. Ennis's head was bowed, his neck tucked into his thin canvas jacket, and his hands were clasped between his knees like he was praying. Jack sauntered slowly up to him and sat down on the cold, hard step on Ennis's side.

Ennis looked up, and Jack didn't miss the ghost of relief pass over Ennis's face. They sat in silence for a while.

"I just..." Jack sighed. He didn't know where to begin.

"You 'member what you said that night in front of the Rabbit?," Ennis asked.

"What's that?"

"I mean, about how we can't undo the past?"

Jack inhaled long and slow, and exhaled in a large puff of air he could see in front of him. What Ennis was about to suggest made anger bubble up inside of him. He should be able to have his moment of hurt for the past. But it was true he'd denied Ennis that moment, hadn't even apologized well himself, and had rejected apologies from Ennis already, so this is where he'd found himself. "I remember," Jack breathed.

"Seems that's a two way street."

Jack nodded. "That's so."

"You know I would," Ennis asserted.

Jack had to nod, because if he didn't know that, then there was no point in being here, in this house with Ennis at all. That was the truth on which their whole lives pivoted for each other. There were regrets they each held unspoken, and knew about without needing to hear.

"I just... I just don't understand." Jack heard exasperation in his own voice. "Did you think I'd hurt Amy?"

"Christ, no! No. I just... that thing with you was going places I..." Ennis took a deep breath in. The night was deepening as they sat in the chill of their own front step, and like a miracle, Jack felt Ennis raise a bracing hand against Jack's own neck. Jack could tell Ennis was fighting for words, but really, Jack understood. Ennis had been scared of what was happened between them, and he'd pushed Jack away the only way he'd known how, using the only weapon he had on a hand- a little girl.

"Yeah, it's alright," Jack huffed. "Just never knew you'd throw such a dirty punch," he added with a chuckle.

"Yeah, well. I came up under K.E., you know," Ennis laughed back, his hand on Jack's neck losing the urgency of its grip, but maintaining its presence.

"You aren't gonna get me again, though."

"Guess not," Ennis smiled the private smile that Jack knew was for him, and Jack was still reveling in the warmth of it, sorry already for being angry over something Ennis had done so long ago and couldn't take back, though it was obvious he would.

He was still lost in the subtle upturn of Ennis's stiff lips when the barking of dogs interrupted his reverie. Both of their gazes snapped forward, and there Jack saw that same blonde woman waving from the street. Ennis dropped his hand like he'd touched acid.

"Hi," she called.

Jack waved. "Those are some feisty dogs you got there," he observed, and she wrestled the big, black beasts who were tangling their leashes.

She laughed and took it as an invitation, walking up their drive. The dogs introduced themselves first, and with enthusiasm, but soon lost interest in the smell of new bushes yet-unexplored.

"I'm Hilary," she offered her hand.

Jack rose from the step and shook it, "Jack Twist." Ennis was sitting frozen in place, so Jack went ahead and made his introduction for him, "This is Ennis del Mar."

"Hi," She nodded towards him, stopping to un-entwine the dogs again. "And this is Fred and Barney," she laughed.

"Nice to meet you," Jack answered, feeling awkward standing here, Ennis unresponsive, wondering what she thought about them.

But if Hilary was aware of the awkwardness, she didn't let on. She dove ahead. "I'm so glad to finally meet you. We didn't know the elderly couple who lived here before you very well, but I'm glad to have more neighbors closer to my own age." She made a face, and drove on, unabashed. "So are you two... together?"

As if jolted with electricity, Ennis stood quickly. He didn't do anything more beyond standing there, though. "Yeah," Jack smiled.

"Do you..." she seemed unsure of herself, but shoved that aside and barreled on. "Do you have any kids?"

"We live with my son Bobby. He's sixteen. Ennis here's got two girls though."

Finally seeing his way into the conversation, Jack figured, Ennis nodded and volunteered their ages in an unsteady voice.

"Well, I have two boys: a six-year-old and a nine-year-old. If your son ever wants to babysit, be sure to give me a call. They're good kids."

Jack laughed. "I had a boy that age once and I don't buy that for a minute."

Hilary giggled. "Well, it was nice to meet you both," she waved goodbye and walked to the house just next door.

Jack gaped after her, unaware all this time that she was their next-door neighbor. Finally recovering, he called, "See you around" after her.

He and Ennis stood for a moment in front of _their_ house with nothing to say. That'd gone... perfectly. Jack shrugged and turned to go inside. He guessed he and Ennis still had more ground to cover in their conversation from earlier, but there would be time for that later. There'd always be time later, now.

Ennis felt his hands shake, but Jack and Bobby were both right that this made the most sense. He cleared his throat and glanced up and down the hallway before pushing open the strong wooden door to the classroom.

"Ennis." Ms. Beatrice Smith was moving around her classroom, shuffling papers from a desk to a file cabinet.

"Ms. Smith." He held his ball cap between sweaty fingers.

She looked up and laughed. "Ennis. You've known me how long? You've always called me Bea before..."

"Uh, yes, ma'am. Bea."

"I'm not _your_ teacher. Have a seat. You're here to talk bout Bobby, right?"

Ennis nodded, making sure to close the classroom door before sitting in the wooden chair next to Bea's desk.

Bea sighed and scanned a grade book in front of her. She looked up at Ennis and back down at the grade book, but she dropped her elbows to the desk and her chin to her hands, fixing him with a _look_. Confirming every fear he'd had about this visit, she didn't start with anything about Bobby.

"I"ll be honest, Ennis. I've known you a while. And I knew Alma when she worked here. And I... well, I guess I'm surprised, is all."

Ennis stared at the floor between his knees.

"Are you happy?," she asked.

It was not a question he'd been expecting. He looked sharply back up at her, but the only words that would come to his mouth were, "Yes, ma'am."

Her smile was genuine. "Good. Now then." She readdressed her grade book and looked back up. "Bobby just doesn't seem to be trying very hard. I understand he makes acceptable grades in other subjects, and I don't think he's less intelligent than any other student, but, to be honest, he doesn't seem to take this class very seriously. I very much doubt that the essays he turns in are representative of his best efforts."

Ennis gaped at her. "Umm, alright."

"He just might not even pass this class, Ennis, if he doesn't step up his efforts. They're truly... well..." She pursed her lips in place of the words she couldn't bring herself to say about her student's work.

The silence stretched to uncomfortable lengths before Ennis managed to say, "Well, what do you suggest?"

"Suggest?"

"I mean, how could he... what could... Well, what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Well, it's not my job to tell you how to parent him." Her brow furrowed.

"Umm, me an', me an' Bobby's dad ain't done a lot of parenting?" He leaned closer to her, relying on her friendship now to help in his ignorance. "What... what would you do if he was your kid?" He fixed her with a meaningful gaze.

She smiled a full, bright smile. "I do not envy you, developing your parenting muscles on a teenager. But I had one, and when she was Bobby's age..." Bea's eyes drifted off, and when they returned to Ennis, all she had to say was, "The best I can suggest is to set up some reward system and to get involved with his academics. I didn't know you were... even parenting Bobby. You and his father ought to be involved in his education, know his teachers. And when he gets good grades, give him positive reinforcement. Punishing him for bad grades will probably only encourage rebelliousness, which I'm guessing you won't want to encourage," she laughed.

Ennis grunted.

"Anyway. So you have any other questions?"

Ennis sat back and shook his head.

"Alright. Nice talking to you, Ennis, and best of luck. Bobby's a smart kid. I'm sure we'll get some beautiful writing out of him yet."

Ennis nodded and stood, thanking Bea and rushing back into the hallway. No one was there to see him exit but a couple stray students walking the halls. He was only going to be working here a few more weeks, anyway. But in reality, that parent-teacher conference had not been as big a worry as he'd feared. The bigger concern was how to do anything about Bobby's grades now that he knew what was going on.

Ennis hung up quickly, lucky he'd just said his goodbyes as Jack came in the door. His palms were sweating again, and he thought he'd sleep well tonight after all the excitement of today. He'd even come home early just to do this thing before Jack got home, and he'd done it. Never done anything like it. The conversation had been subdued, and Ennis hadn't said anything to give himself away, but it didn't keep him from reading the meaning in Lanie's change of tone when Ennis'd asked about whether it would be ok if his guest for the wedding was a man. He'd had to call- couldn't surprise them like that, but it'd been the fucking toughest thing he's ever done, maybe, just a little harder than talking to Bea about Bobby, or meeting that Hilary on the front step. But with every time, Ennis noticed, it got a little easier. Or at least, less terrifying.

And even though Lanie'd sounded worried and confused when he'd said he'd wanted to bring a man, when Ennis'd asked if she'd remembered Jack Twist, "worried and confused" had become excited and animated in three seconds flat. Maybe it wasn't just that Ennis was gay only for Jack. Maybe his family was only okay with him being gay for Jack. It was an idea Ennis had never thought of before, but it didn't really matter since he didn't have any intent of testing out the theory with anyone other than Jack.

And whatever the case may be, Lanie'd practically gotten to _begging_ Ennis to bring Jack to the wedding. K.E. and his wife Barbara had an extra room for them. Everything was set for Amy's spring wedding.

It was their time together now, what with Bobby around all the time. After sex, which had become a regularly-scheduled feature of the evening, they would talk about their day while they hung on the precipice of sleep. It was when they revisited the past, or took trips to the future. That night, though, they spent firmly in the present, talking over what to do about Bobby's problems at school. Being a parent was a tough job, Ennis thought, and he felt mildly bad that he'd left all the work to Alma while the girls were growing up. He'd generally made a point of letting her make the decisions, but now, having a partner, someone to bounce ideas off of and to ask for opinions and advice- it seemed like everyone should have this. Maybe Alma had this with that new husband of hers. Ennis even found himself hoping so as he wrapped an arm around Jack's chest and opened up the next topic.

"I think we ought to go to Amy's wedding."

"You do."

"I talked to Lanie today and she said K.E. can put us up."

"You talked to Lanie." Jack wasn't asking questions.

"Think Amy'd want you there, Jack."

"Doubt Amy'd remember me, Ennis."

"Well... Well, too late anyway, I RSVP'd."

"Yeah, and did you say I wanted fish or chicken?," Jack laughed.

"Cafeteria spaghetti," Ennis answered, in what amounted to an inside joke from way back in high school.

Jack chuckled, and Ennis rode up and down with the noise.

"Steak," Ennis amended.

"Well when is it?," Jack asked.

"End of April."

"Maybe Bobby can stay with Lureen."

Neither one of them said anything for a while, and Ennis thought maybe Jack had gone to sleep, but he was worried that maybe he'd overstepped his bounds. "Jack? You awake?"

"Yup."

"You okay with this? Going to the wedding?"

"Okay?"

"I mean, we don't have to."

"Ennis." Jack pulled Ennis's head up so that they could see eye-to-eye. "Not only would I like to, I'm fucking honored to. I'm nervous about meeting your family again, sure, but I already know they like me," Jack winked. "Now stop worrying so much and go to sleep."

Ennis pulled himself off Jack and stretched out against his own cool pillow, catching the ghosts of Jack's eyes once more in the dim light, noticing the faint smile across Jack's face. He felt an answering smile on his own face. He was a little nervous about the wedding himself, but it was far enough away that he could enjoy this moment without worrying about that one for a while yet to come. He drifted into an easy sleep at Jack's side.


	14. Chapter 14

Lanie insisted Jack and Ennis come up early to spend time with the family before Amy's Saturday wedding. Jack decided early meant Thursday morning so they could avoid the worst traffic on 270. They would be going opposite the flow of traffic, so it should be alright. Ennis, however, was loath to take more time off from his new job, since he had to take Friday anyway. Still, Ennis responded to Jack's comments about the traffic with a mighty grimace, letting Jack know that Ennis had sat through that traffic at least once, and once was more than enough for a man to learn he never wanted to do it again. Jack knew Ennis's aversion to traffic was even stronger than his own. How anyone sat in that shit every day was beyond him. He'd never do it.

At any rate, they ended up driving up on Thursday morning, just the two of them.

They'd planned on leaving Bobby home alone, but he'd miss two days of school since he wasn't driving yet and it was Jack who took him on a daily basis now. But Ennis didn't trust Bobby to be home alone since he'd started dating Kelly officially. Jack didn't think Bobby would do anything too stupid, but he had to admit that he and Ennis at that age had been screwing like rabbits. No doubt that's what Ennis was thinking of, too.

Then, only two weeks before Amy's wedding, Jack got what he considered the best news possible from Lureen, though he knew from long practice that her cold voice only thinly veiled tears as she delivered it: she and Jay had separated. Jack hoped some time alone with Bobby would do her some good. After all, for so many years it'd been just Lureen and Bobby against the world, and as happy as Bobby was with his new situation, he could not disguise that he missed his mother. Jack knew from his own experience how bad it felt to miss your son, so he was glad he could give Lureen this one thing, if she was hurting.

That was how come they ended up here, the two of them, alone on 270 at eleven in the morning. They found their way off the highway and onto side roads following Ennis's memory, which wasn't as good as it used to be. Ennis chewed his lower lip from the passenger's seat, but he was far-sighted so he could see the street-signs coming a mile away, and he recognized some road names.

"You know, why the hell didn't you just ask her for some directions?"

"Huh?"

"Directions. You could have just asked for some."

"Imposing enough as it is."

"Asking directions isn't imposing."

"Well, it hasn't been that long since I've been here."

"Didn't you say you hadn't been up since you divorced Alma?"

Ennis sat back silently in his seat, clearly signaling that the conversation was over, though Jack knew he'd spoken the truth.

Somehow, though, Ennis managed. They were pulling up to Lanie's trailer, where they were all planning on meeting, around twelve-thirty. Ennis's knee was bouncing and Jack's hands were sweating, but they had come all this way to do this thing, and Jack was damned if he was going to look afraid. It seemed to him that Ennis's mindset was about the same, since as soon as they pulled up in Jack's car, Ennis was swinging the door open and standing outside, facing down his fears because he didn't have a choice. Jack might have been proud if he wasn't busy being so damned terrified himself, recalling suddenly his first time meeting Lureen's old man. He didn't have much luck with in-laws.

"Ennis!," an overweight woman with dirty-blonde hair burst through the screen door of the trailer as Jack was getting out of the car.

"Lanie," Ennis grunted, cracking a smile as the woman scooped him into a hug.

Jack remembered Lanie. He remembered Lanie maybe a hundred and fifty pounds thinner, and with long, light-blonde hair, but Jack guessed age and dis-use of hair dye could have produced the effect he was seeing before him.

Ennis extracted himself from the hug and Jack guessed he was on stage next. He plunked his hands on his waist and came around the front of the car very slowly.

"Lanie, uh, you remember Jack?" Ennis stepped back and motioned towards Jack.

Jack took a step forward with one foot and stuck out his right hand, "Nice seeing you again, ma'am." He'd always called her "ma'am" back when he'd just been Ennis's high school friend, 'cause his mother had raised him with pretty good manners, and it just came back naturally.

"Of course, of course." Lanie was all smiles. "But you aren't going to call me ma'am, are you? Call me Lanie." They shook hands for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only about a full ten seconds, before Lanie laughed and said, "Come 'ere," and Jack ended up with the same bear-hug treatment that Ennis had gotten. He was thrown off balance and not so fast to hug back, but he sure did laugh a little. He spotted Ennis over Lanie's shoulder: Ennis smiling and blushing and looking towards the ground, and Jack could never have restrained a chuckle at that sight.

The door clattered open again, though, just as Lanie was letting Jack go, and the tall, dark-haired man that came out was the exact spitting-image of the K.E. that Jack remembered, save for a dusting of silvery hair by his temples and his in mustache that was also still hanging onto the past.

"Ennis," K.E. clapped Ennis on the shoulder, and Ennis reciprocated.

"K.E. You remember my friend Jack."

"Sure." K.E. and Jack shook hands, and K.E. smiled. "You ain't hardly changed a bit since all them years ago."

"Well, then I'm not the only one," Jack laughed.

"Not like Ennis here, lookin' all tired and old." K.E. jabbed his little brother on the shoulder, and Ennis feigned offense. "Oh, you ain't met my wife and son." K.E. turned back to the trailer and yelled in. "Barbara?"

"Yeah?" a voice answered him.

"Why don't you and Charlie come on out and say hi? Ennis and his friend are here. Maybe bring a couple beers. It's a nice day, we oughtta sit outside."

"Alright. Just give me a minute," she called back.

Jack noticed that so far he was just Ennis's "friend," but he knew that everyone knew what that really meant, so he'd take it if it made them feel comfortable. Right now he was grateful for the warm welcome and the hospitality.

Lanie was already bringing some plastic lawn chairs around to the shady side of the trailer, under an oak tree.

A thin woman with close-cropped blonde hair came out, trailed by a young teenage boy with dark hair who was holding a six pack and generally looking disinterested in the world. Jack knew the type.

"Jack, this is Barbara, my wife, and Charlie, my son," K.E. jumped in. "Barbara, this is Jack, and I think you remember my little brother Ennis."

"Of course I do. Nice to see you again Ennis, and nice to meet you, Jack."

"Nice to see you," Ennis mumbled.

"Lanie's been entertaining me for days with stories about the trouble the two of you used to get into in high school," Barbara laughed. "I hope you aren't still goin' around sneakin' into girls' windows."

"I never did that," said Ennis. "Jack never did that, either." He took a beer and sat in a chair.

Everyone else followed suit, although K.E. went to the door to let some little barking mutt of a dog out of the trailer. It proceeded to jump around their feet. Charlie, rather than grabbing a beer, pulled a Nintendo out of his pocket and sunk into silence.

"Oh yeah, well, I think your memory is hazy, then," answered Jack, "but how your sister came to know about that, I just don't want to know."

"You did that?," Ennis asked.

"Hell, you were in the car. You remember... what was her name..."

"Janet, and she works with me at the high school, is how I know about that," Lanie supplied.

"Janet! Yes! We were... umm, she had that record that you liked. That country shit. So I climbed into her room to borrow it, 'cause she was supposed to be at that sleepover..."

Ennis started nodding. "'Cept she had the flu. That's right."

"Janet says you nearly gave her a heart attack," Lanie chuckled, "boy crawling in her window in the middle of the night. 'Course, I guess she didn't have much cause to be scared on that account." She guffawed like she'd made the world's funniest joke, but Jack decided he'd roll with the punches. She was doing her best and didn't mean any harm.

Ennis was already blushing from Lanie's joke, but Jack needed to push the envelope a little, take it out for a spin, see what she could do, so all he said was, "No, that's right. What do you think we wanted that record for?"

Lanie burst into open-mouthed laughter that Jack actually found a little bit adorable. She was as giddy as anyone he'd seen, but with her daughter getting married, it could be that the stress was making her a little loopy and maybe she needed the laughs. That's right, her daughter!

"Say, where's Amy?" Jack couldn't believe he hadn't asked that before now, but with the rush of meeting people, he'd just been overwhelmed.

"Oh," Lanie seemed to sober up immediately, "she's staying with friends tonight. Sort of a bachelorette party. I think it's pretty low-key, though. They rented some movies, and I think they're going to tie-dye or something."

"Alright," Jack nodded.

Everyone else nodded and silence fell over the conversation until K.E. interrupted with, "So how was you all's drive up here?"

"Good, good," Ennis answered, and no one spoke again for a while.

"Well," Lanie started, "we've got some hamburgers and I made some hot dogs. We can put them on the grill when you all get hungry. Then maybe after that you can follow K.E. and Barbara back to their new house. You'll love it, it's huge," Lanie offered with a smile. She seemed a genuinely happy person, and for that, Jack was glad.

The rest of the afternoon and early evening passed that way, in snippets of conversation. Ennis told everyone about his new job. Jack learned that Lanie was a cafeteria lady, which secretly amused him since he'd had a long-standing hatred for that particular profession, but he didn't tell Lanie about it. K.E. talked about his work selling cars. Barbara was a secretary at the same dealership. Charlie was thirteen. Lanie, K.E., and Barbara inquired after the girls, and Ennis tried to update them as best he could seeing as how he only spoke to them once a month. When Ennis said how infrequently he talked to them, Barbara nodded, and said, "Jack, you're lucky you don't have kids. They're a handful."

Everyone'd had a couple beers by that point, and Jack laughed so suddenly he spit some of his onto the ground. Ennis seemed to be coughing on his own beer.

"I got a son," Jack recovered in time to horn in. "Bobby. He's sixteen. He's gonna be driving any day, and..." Jack shook his head, unable to voice how frightened he was by the idea of his teenage son behind the wheel of a heavy, metal killing machine.

"So you were married?," Barbara asked.

Jack nodded.

"And I guess your son is with his mother?"

"Well, this weekend he is. He actually lives with us."

Everyone nodded slowly, chewing on that information. Barbara seemed to be the only one with the guts to ask about the situation, though. "Is he... okay with that?"

Jack's estimation of Barbara rose a notch. At least she was calling things like they were, if the situation was somewhat unfamiliar to her, instead of just trying to pass them off as roommates or friends. "Yeah, yeah," Jack nodded. "Bobby loves Ennis. Matter of fact..." Jack looked over at Ennis, who was watching his beer can with heavily-lidded eyes, but not objecting to Jack's speaking, "Bobby lived with Ennis in his apartment for a little while while I was trying to get my living situation figured out. He wanted to. Wasn't getting on too well with his mother's new husband."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Lanie interjected. "Step-parents can be so hard on kids."

"They can be. But they aren't always." Jack looked over at Ennis, who was staring at his beer can, and reached out one arm just to poke him in the shoulder, not so different from what K.E.'d done earlier this afternoon.

"Hey now," Ennis laughed and shrugged Jack away.

"You hard on Bobby?," Jack asked.

"Hell yes," Ennis answered. "That boy... he's probably sneaking into some poor girl's window right now, except he's got indecent designs on her."

Jack chuckled.

"Well," K.E. sighed. "I reckon Barbara and Lanie have a long day tomorrow with Amy, so I think it's about time to head on back home. You guys want to follow me?"

"I'm not so tired," Lanie said. "I was hoping to keep these two a little bit longer, pry a bit, you know."

"Well I'm pretty tired," Ennis offered, and though Jack could tell he was tired, he also could tell he didn't want his private life pried into.

Jack, however, felt like he was just warming up, and was rather enjoying himself. Lanie seemed stressed and maybe lonely, just a couple days before her only child got married. "I'll stay," Jack volunteered.

"Huh?," Ennis asked.

"I'll stay," he repeated. "Lanie can probably pry more information out of me than out of you anyway." Jack threw a wink at Ennis.

"I'll drive him over later," Lanie clarified.

Ennis glanced away and sighed. "Alright. See you later then."

"Yup," Jack nodded. Lanie and Jack watched K.E., Barbara, and Charlie drive away, Ennis following, driving Jack's car.

"Well," Lanie smiled at Jack. "Why don't we clean up some of these plates and cans and see what kind of alcohol I have?"

"Sounds good," Jack smiled. He hopped-to, thinking that maybe he was about to find a sister, or at the very least a sister-in-law, where none had really been expected.


	15. Chapter 15

Empty beer cans already littered the table when Lanie went to a cabinet and began fussing about. She withdrew a bottle of Wild Turkey coated in about a half inch of dust, looking like maybe it should even be familiar to Jack from days past.

They had talked about Lanie, mostly, for a good while. She hated her job and she had said it paid crap. Amy had to get a job working at a nursing home to help cover her own wedding expenses, and even then they were holding it in the church that Barbara's brother was pastor of because that got them a good discount. The reception was going to be in Barbara and K.E.'s back yard, picnic style, which was not what Lanie had wanted for her daughter, but it was the best she could give her.

Lanie had been married once while Jack was out of the loop, and it had left her with a different last name than del Mar, but she wasn't proud of it. The man had done bad things to Amy. Lanie didn't elaborate, but Jack didn't want her to, and he'd silently reached for more beer. He was angry with Lanie for letting that happen, but angry with himself, as well, for blaming her when she was clearly blaming herself plenty. He couldn't tell her that he wished she wouldn't do that, though. She said she'd been too lazy to change her name back, but Jack secretly wondered if she wanted to bear the shame, to remind herself or some shit.

When the Wild Turkey came out, though, Jack understood that his turn was coming up. He wasn't near drunk and neither was she; Lanie was pushing three-hundred pounds, Jack bet, and might even best him on the alcohol front, though Jack was no light-weight.

She poured OJ glasses full of 101-proof bourbon. The sweet, caramel scent enticed Jack, and he sipped slowly and gently. He guessed this stuff wasn't cheap, but Lanie's daughter was getting married, so what the hell, right?

"So," Lanie smiled.

"Yup."

"I have to say, I was surprised to hear you and Ennis found each other after so many years apart."

Jack took a deeper sip and chuckled. "Not so many."

"How's that?"

"Lanie," Jack frowned at her vinyl tablecloth covered with watermelons. It was hideous. "Ennis and I... we been together most of this time. I mean, not together, but not... not together, either."

"What do you mean?" Her eyebrows wrinkled.

"I mean, we got back together after I got out of college. I got a divorce. I thought he was going to also and we were going to make something out of it. He never said so. Don't know why I thought that, but..." Jack tracked a watermelon with his fingertip and took another sip, and then another, wanting to wipe out the pain of the past.

"No shit."

"'Course, he didn't get divorced. So he had an affair instead. With me, I mean. It wasn't much of anything. He was always sneaking away, once a month if I was lucky. We'd meet up in crap hourly motels. God, felt so goddamn dirty." Jack swallowed a hefty mouthful of whiskey. "An' here I was a home wrecker and sneaking around, and all I ever wanted to be..., well."

Lanie poured him some more whiskey. "Poor little Alma."

"Poor little fucking Alma, sure. She got him every goddamn day of the week."

"Sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just..."

"Well, you got him in the end, right? He did get divorced, and then you two got together?"

Jack exhaled a bitter laugh and swallowed the expensive bourbon too quickly for its price. "You make it sound so simple. But no, it wasn't Alma that was standing between us. Ennis didn't want to be gay. Oh sure, he let me come to his apartment when he was horny. He even gave me a key, but if I came over too much, you can be sure he let me know. He always did call the shots. I came over once a week, but even then it was mostly sex. I guess he convinced himself that's what he needed me for." Jack buried his head in his hand.

Lanie clearly didn't know how to respond, though, so they sat in silence for a while before Jack found he wanted to tell the rest of that story, too. "Course, I didn't deal with it in the most mature way." He looked back up at her. "I found guys elsewhere. Clubs and bars. Drank a lot. Made sure I wasn't ever alone, because when I was alone, I just got mad at him, and I couldn't stand letting that build up. But all of that only made it harder for him to love me, I think. Only made me more gay, only made me stand for all the things he's afraid of."

Lanie leaned back. "I don't think it made you more _gay_. I think it made you more _human_. After Ricky... After my divorce, I did a lot of the same thing. Just something about having someone want you that makes you feel like maybe you're not the trash you think you must be."

Jack poured himself some more bourbon. He was feeling a good, strong buzz now, and he wanted to keep it.

"So something must have changed, though," Lanie probed. "Ennis doesn't seem terrified of being gay right now. Not like in high school."

Jack looked up at her. "Did you know he was gay in high school? I mean, just from him being with me, I guess? From that night we sat outside?"

"Jack, I knew before then. Before I knew you existed. I wasn't thrilled, but when our parents died it made me realize what's important, you know? My little brother was still alive. I never really got over being happy about that."

Jack smiled hazily. "Happy about that myself."

"He was in the car that day, you know."

Jack's head jerked up. "What the hell?"

"He was in the backseat. Broke his collarbone. He was only, what, twelve? God. I guess he saw mom and dad die. I don't know; he never said, and I never asked."

"Oh my God. I never knew that."

Lanie shrugged. "I'm not surprised. He's never said anything about it. But that wasn't long after it was pretty obvious to us that he'd started to crush on this one boy at school, so I knew he was gay then. But after that, I don't think K.E. or I cared any more. We just felt so fucking lucky to still have him."

Jack watched her, his jaw hanging low. He wanted to gather young Ennis up in his arms just then, or old Ennis, whatever Ennis he had, and just make sure he was real and alive and all there. "Fucking lucky," Lanie had said, and Jack felt more than that about now.

"But anyway," Lanie continued, "How did you end up here together if things were going so shitty between you?"

"Um, well, I left Ennis. After all that time, I up and left him. I wanted some stability. I met a man, shacked up with him for over a year before I wandered my way back to Ennis again. By then, Ennis had grown a little bit, and I'd grown a little bit, and, well, here we are."

"Alright. Sounds healthy enough to me," she offered.

"You know the fucked-up part?," Jack asked, clearly feeling the whiskey now.

"No, what's that?"

"I still sometimes miss that other guy. I got everything I want with Ennis, but Ed- that was his name- he was real good in bed, and sweet, never stubborn... things between us ended so sudden." Jack sighed.

Lanie leaned forward and took a sip. "Life's fucked up," she agreed with Jack's silent sentiment.

"I mean, I would never want to go back to him, but-"

"You said yourself that things ended quickly, and after more than a year. You have a right to miss him, Jack. Don't beat yourself up."

"Yeah, that's easy to say..."

"Besides," Lanie flashed a wicked smile, "are you implying my baby brother is a let-down in bed?"

Jack grinned from ear-to-ear. "Now if I said anything to insinuate that, I must be drunk, because that is surely not the case."

"Oh really?"

"Mmm Hmm."

"Glad he's working on making it up to you, then."

"That he is," Jack laughed.

They talked on about more frivolous subjects: Barbara's silly little dog and the way she babied it, the excessive cost of gas, the excessive cost of alcohol, and the excessive cost of weddings, until the level of the Wild Turkey bottle had dropped appreciably and Lanie didn't think of leading Jack back to K.E.'s, and Jack didn't think of going. He dropped into unconsciousness quickly on her couch under an afghan that he thought he might also remember. Not much in Lanie's trailer was new.

Ennis pounded on the trailer door at nine in the morning.

"Coming," a quiet voice answered.

When the door swung open, Ennis was greeted by the sight of his niece, her light blonde hair chopped off so it was only at her ears, though that brought out the curls a little bit. "Well hey there, little girl. Congratulations. Didn't expect you'd be home so early."

She smiled shy and politely, and moved forward to hug him. "Uncle Ennis. Got a lot to do." She had always been a quiet girl, rather like his Junior. Well, not always. She hadn't been so quiet when she was little.

"Can I come in?"

She turned and made a face towards the living room. "Umm..."

"Your mama got a man on the couch?" Ennis couldn't conceal a little smile.

Amy's blush was all the answer Ennis needed.

"It's alright, I know him."

"Oh, okay." She swung the door open and let him in.

There was Jack, alright. He was still in his clothes, sprawled across the couch, with a blanket balled up in his arms, being held like it was a person. Ennis walked on over and poked him once, hard. Nothing happened. Ennis poked him a second time, harder.

Jack jumped into life, rolling over and straight onto the floor, hissing "Fuck, the hell?," and pulling the blanket up over his head.

"Jack..."

Jack opened one eye onto the bright room. "Ennis? I think your sister got me fucking skunked and then took advantage of my big mouth. I got a headache the size of Texas."

"Might want to watch your language. There's a lady in the room."

Jack didn't seem to register Ennis's words, though, and slumped back onto the carpet, pulling the blanket up over himself. Ennis asked Amy if she had some water and some painkillers and Amy fetched them, returning just a moment later from the kitchen.

Ennis knelt down next to Jack on the floor, pulling back the blanket from Jack's face. "You want to take some painkillers?"

Jack nodded and sat up, seeming more than happy to accept them from Ennis's hand. After he swallowed them, he added with a muffled voice, "Sorry I didn't come home last night. We got to drinking and talking."

"Yeah, well."

Only then did Jack start working his way slowly to his feet, leaning on Ennis for support. Only when he was nearly there did he finally notice that they had a young, blonde audience. Jack froze.

"Jack, Amy. Amy, I don't think you remember him, but this is my friend Jack Twist. He used to babysit you back when I was in high school."

Amy's mouth fell open a little bit.

Jack's fell open a lot. He detached himself from Ennis too quickly and swiped his hands on his jeans. "Uh, hey there. You... congratulations on getting married. Someone's real lucky to have you."

Amy recovered enough to blush a little below her ears. "Thanks."

Ennis broke the uncomfortable silence. "Anyone... anyone mind if maybe I make some breakfast? Amy, you think your mom will be up soon?"

"Oh, oh yeah, she'll be up. We have a lot to do today."

"Alright, I'll make some eggs or something." Ennis headed straight for the kitchen. He was leaving Jack and Amy all alone, and maybe that was weak of him because mostly he just wanted to be out of the room, but he was doing the best he could, and he couldn't stand that green-eyed gaze and wondering what Amy knew and what she didn't know. Eggs, he could handle. So eggs he would stick with. Maybe even toast, too, or omelets if Lanie had cheese. Anything to prolong his time alone.


	16. Chapter 16

Amy sat silently in an arm chair, her hands clasped between her legs, her wide eyes glued to the floor.

Jack cleared his throat from where he sat on the couch.

Amy looked up and forced a smile.

"So, you, uh, have a lot to do today?," Jack asked her.

Amy nodded and glanced away.

"What's on the schedule?" Jack didn't really care; he was making small talk.

"Um, I have to get my dress steamed, I'm getting my hair done, and we have a meeting with the caterer. We're also picking up Ty's tux."

"He can't pick it up himself?," Jack spoke before he thought.

Amy shrugged towards the floor.

They didn't say anything for a few seconds, but Jack was the first to speak again, "You probably don't remember me, huh?"

He saw the edge of her mouth turn up, and she looked up at him, a little more fearlessly now. "Um, a little bit. I mean, I think I do," she offered. "Didn't you used to walk me down to the creek sometimes?"

Jack smiled. "That's right."

"And there were these huge dragonflies there."

"Probably not as big as you remember."

Amy laughed. "For a while I thought I made you up, you know? Until mom mentioned you once..." her voice drifted off. "I thought you were mom's boyfriend," she spoke more quietly.

Jack laughed. "Nope. That I wasn't. Just the babysitter."

Amy's head jerked up and she watched him carefully as if she was seeing between his words, and he knew suddenly that Amy wasn't in the dark about anything. This wasn't Jack's family, and she wasn't his niece, but he was out, dammit, and he didn't see why anyone would expect him to lie to her, especially since she clearly knew. "Well, I mean, not just...," he amended.

She smiled a shy little smile, and that was a good reward for having told the truth. "It was silly, anyway," Amy shook her head. "I just used to think you were like _my_ friend. But now I realize I don't hardly know you. You're just some stranger living with my uncle, you know?"

"Amy," Jack said seriously, "I'd really like to be more than that. I'd really like to be your friend, or like an uncle to you. I guess I'm going to be in your family for a good, long while now. You think that would be ok?"

Amy nodded again, but this time towards the couch, saying, "I don't know! That wasn't a really good first impression, you know?"

Jack laughed. She still had that fire down in there, he could see now. She just guarded it more carefully than she had as a little girl.

"Thank you for the omelets, Ennis," Lanie smile through a mouth full of egg.

"No problem," Ennis muttered.

"He cook like this for you at home?," Lanie asked Jack, right in front of Ennis and Amy. Ennis glanced at Amy and started to rip angrily into the eggs with his fork.

Jack watched Ennis, looked back at Lanie, glanced over to Amy who was looking down but in the stiff way of someone who knew they were making trouble without meaning to.

"Mostly I cook at home," Jack answered softly, with a chuckle.

Ennis glared at Jack. Lanie's smile faded when she saw the look. But it was Amy who spoke first, in her quietest voice, "It's ok, Uncle Ennis, I know."

"Gotta go on discussing my business-" Ennis started towards Jack, under his breath.

"I told her," Lanie interrupted. "I guess I didn't see any reason you would be ashamed of having such a wonderful man in your life, Ennis."

Ennis swallowed a mouthful of egg without chewing and didn't say anything else. Back in high school, Jack knew Ennis was used to being the little brother and being polite to his older sister, and it seemed that much hadn't changed between Lanie and Ennis.

"You going to be ready to go soon, Amy?," Lanie asked.

Amy nodded and got up, leaving the kitchen.

"We gotta go too," Ennis grumbled.

"Go where?"

"Back to K.E.'s. He volunteered us to set up all the tables and chairs for the reception."

"How many are we talking?"

"We invited about sixty people," Lanie supplied the answer.

Jack nodded and inhaled his last bite of omelet. "All right. Let's do this thing."

Jack and Ennis sat on the bride's side, about fifth row back, with a good foot and a half of pew between them. Charlie was an usher. Ty was a thick boy with dark hair and tanned skin. He had two groomsmen. One looked like a brother, but was taller than him by a good seven inches. The other was a skinny, freckled boy, probably a friend.

The first girl to walk down the aisle was tanned with dark hair as well, probably a member of Ty's family, Jack decided. Her dark hair was down, and she wore a silver-gray dress. Next came a young lady with a red bun and a red-wine colored dress that was all shiny and only came to her knees. Both young ladies had bouquets of pink and purple flowers.

Finally, they played that song that brides are supposed to walk in to. Everyone stood, and K.E. led Amy down the aisle, only Amy really _had_ got her hair dyed. Her light blonde hair was streaked with streams of blood-red. Jack's jaw fell open. He heard Ennis make a noise, and saw eyes get wide all over the church. Jack wondered why she would do something like that.

He dress was long white, and asserted with a simple pink sash around the waist. She had a veil and tiara in her hair, and her bouquet was a massive pile of purples, pinks, and fuchsias.

The ceremony was short and sweet, and Ennis fidgeted uncomfortably when his niece kissed the groom, though the kiss was chaste enough. They all climbed back into their cars afterwards and went on to K.E.'s house, where a buffet had been set up. A bunch of chairs had been placed around tables all over the lawn, with the able help of Jack and Ennis themselves, of course. The seating was not assigned, and Jack hesitated when he got to the backyard, not sure where to be, who to be with. He was positive a lot of introductions were going to happen tonight under the stars, and thankfully the weather was cooperating beautifully and there weren't many bugs, but weather and wildlife were really the least of Jack's worry. He followed Ennis into the back yard by a good three feet, just in case.

Not too surprisingly, Ennis didn't know too many people at the reception, either. A couple people came over to shake his hand and mention how long it'd been since they'd seen him, and Ennis did likewise. When forced, Ennis, with set jaw, introduced Jack as a friend of the family. Jack took the hint and kept his distance for the most part. He found other lonesome-looking guests and struck up conversations. When people asked how he knew the couple, he said he was a friend of the bride's family, and found that got him along just fine. Since the food was buffet-style, Jack skirted the seating issue by remaining standing most of the time, though he and Ennis did end up looking across at each other from opposite sides of the buffet line once. They took the opportunity to sit together and eat their food, mostly in silence, before they parted again. It was, to Jack, a major change of pace from his social life with Ed, but it was only one night, and as much as he hated it, Jack reckoned he could stand it.

Jack asked Lanie to dance, and she obliged him with several before the evening was over. Barbara danced with him once, and he even got to take a turn around the wooden dance floor with the bride herself.

"You dyed your hair," Jack mentioned over the pale lyrics of Hank Williams' _Ramblin' Man_.

She smiled. "You like it?"

"I wasn't... expecting it. You mind if I ask why?"

"I've been planning to for weeks. Just wanted a change," she shrugged.

Jack nodded. _That_, he could understand. Everyone's timing was different, but she'd wanted a change and she'd got one- a new husband, a new life, and a new image all on the same day. If there was something she was hoping to leave behind, maybe she would just be able to do it. Though, in Jack's experience, that wasn't quite how things worked. You can run but some day you've got to rest, and when you do those things sneak back up on you so quickly. Maybe it was better just to stand and fight before you get tired out from all the running.

They danced in silence to the end of the song, and he kissed her on the cheek and let her go. He found Ennis standing off to the side nursing a bottle of beer Michelobe.

"I'm exhausted. About ready to call it a night," Jack said to Ennis casually.

Ennis glanced around at the thinning crowd and finished up his beer in one gulp. "Me too. Come on, I'll show you where they put us."

Jack followed Ennis through the crowd and back inside the house. The kitchen and dining room had become a kind of staging area, and they fought their way through them, neglecting to say goodnight to anyone. Everyone probably had too much on their minds to care at the moment, anyway. And through they would have liked to say they went upstairs to the guest room Barbara and K.E. had made up for them to do something more than pass out on the bed, that would be a lie. After the crowd and the party and the emotional tension of the day, they barely had enough energy to do just that, despite the party noises still drifting in through the window.

The house was a busy mess in the morning. Ennis woke up before Jack and pulled on jeans and a shirt to go downstairs. Once there, he found that Lanie was over, and that she and Barbara and another woman Ennis didn't know were frantically hard-at-work cleaning the house.

"Ennis," Barbara looked up. "Would you like some fruit salad? I made some fruit salad for breakfast. Or we have got cereal if you prefer that. And milk and orange juice." It was the same warm welcome Ennis'd got the morning before.

"Thank you, Barbara. I think I can get it myself."

"Are you sure?"

"I sure am." Ennis poured some flakes, dumping a spoonful of the fruit salad on top of that.

"Barbara, has Ennis met Patty?"

"Oh goodness, no!" Barbara pulled the new woman over. "Ennis, this is my little sister, Patty. Patty, this is Lanie's little brother, Ennis."

"Nice to meet you," Patty smiled, but she couldn't shake hands because she was clutching a rather full trash bag.

Ennis muttered a greeting in return and went back to his cereal. Patty and Barbara went out the back door, presumably to clean the back yard.

"Ennis," Lanie leaned close after they were alone. Her tone was heavy with secrets, and Ennis swallowed his mouthful heavily, looking Lanie right in the eye. "Patty doesn't... Patty and Shawn, Barbara's brother, the pastor? They don't know about you and Jack. You can tell them if you want, but Barbara didn't feel comfortable, seeing has how they have... strong opinions, if you catch my meanin'."

Ennis scooped another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. He guessed this was how his life was now. This used to be a secret from everyone, even himself. Now it was complicated, with some people knowing and some people not knowing, but he figured Barbara knew her family better than anyone, so her judgment was probably a good one.

Lanie was giving him a sympathetic look he didn't want, so he just nodded. "We're going out to visit Jack's folks before we go home today. I'll get him packed up and we'll be on our way."

"Ennis, you don't have to take it like that."

"I'm not taking it like anything. That was always the plan." Ennis squeezed her arm and took his bowl of cereal back up to his room where he belonged. Jack was still sound asleep in bed, but Ennis leaned back against the headboard, letting a leg touch Jack's where Jack's hung over the covers. Some mornings the world seemed like a really hard place to be, but why had it taken Ennis so many years to understand that locked into a place with Jack made that world easier, not harder?

Jack woke up an hour later to find Ennis, cereal bowl long empty, watching him. Jack made coming back to bed worth Ennis's while. Later, Ennis told Jack about Barbara's family, and Jack nodded quietly. "You ready to go on to your folks," Ennis asked?

"No, but I guess it's about that time," Jack sighed, sprawling across the bed and naked.

"Doesn't getter better by putting it off."

"Just wouldn't be right to come up here and not see them."

"Yup."

"Well."

"I'll go down first," Ennis offered. "She can think what she likes. You can come along in five minutes or so."

"Yeah, I still have to pack, anyway," Jack answered.

"I'll fix you a bowl of cereal."

Jack nodded, thankfully not mentioning how that would look. Ennis knew how it would look, but his patience was wearing thin. People could think what they wanted to.

"What time is it?," Jack asked.

"Quarter of nine."

"Alright. I'll be down in a few."


	17. Chapter 17

Jack didn't come here often if he could help it, but in all those years, the Twist house hadn't changed much. It was a small, whitewashed feature sitting on a hill, accompanied by a couple barns and a silo. Jack's father ran a tiny dairy operation, and farmed some grain as well, but there was no way for him to compete with jack shit, so mostly he lived off government subsidies and tried to keep the buildings from falling down. A little duck pond at the bottom of the hill, where Jack and Ennis turned from the road up the gravel drive, bred mosquitoes in summer and mud in every season.

They parked in the patch of gravelly-grass in front of the house, wedging between an old Cavalier that didn't run, the black Suburban that Jack's parents relied on as their primary vehicle. An old, blue Ford truck hosted a "For Sale" sign that it had worn for at least three years. The engine probably hadn't been turned over in twice that long.

Jack led Ennis up to the door, muttering, "Well, here we are."

"Ain't changed much," Ennis answered. Jack noticed Ennis was staring off towards the western hill, in the direction of the old, white barn that held the three horses that hung on at the ranch, as well as the hay loft and equipment. It was a meaningful place for them.

Jack looked forward once again and knocked.

His mother answered, a tense smile on her face. She said the sweet sorts of things mothers say to sons, and hugged Jack.

"Mom, you remember Ennis."

She paused, her eyes glazing over Ennis. Jack looked at his dad, reading a catalog at wooden table, hovering over a cup of coffee. His dad looked up, and Jack and his father caught each other's eyes. John, Sr. nodded a hello, but Jack rejected it.

"My friend from high school," Jack helped his mom along, who was still staring at the man in front of her as if trying to place him, muttering welcoming words, but distracted as her brain attempted to click tumblers into place.

"Boy that helped Jack fix the fence that one time," John answered to his catalog.

"Yeah," Jack nodded at his mom. Her memory was not what it used to be.

"Ooooh! Oh yes, come in. Ennis. Would you like coffee, either of you? I've also made some chocolate chip cookies."

"That sounds good," Jack answered.

"Thank you, ma'am," Ennis mumbled.

But before she could escape, Jack grabbed her elbow. "Mom. Ennis and I are living together."

Her eyes grew wide. "Oh?"

John looked up, then back down again.

"Let me get those cookies," Jack's mom shook her elbow free. She called once more from the kitchen. "That's good, that you managed to find an old friend. A person shouldn't live alone."

"Mom, we aren't friends," Jack answered. Ennis thrust his hands into is pockets and looked at his shoes. This wasn't news to Jack's parents. He'd come out to them years ago, but it didn't matter, because they heard what they wanted to hear. He got some brand of sordid delight out of testing their patience, but they held on and probably would until the day they died.

Shrugging in Ennis's direction at the silence Jack got in response, they sat down to share coffee and cookies. Jack's mother asked about Bobby, and was delighted to hear he was living in Maryland, and not only that, but with Jack.

"Oh, you should have brought him!"

"Maybe next time."

"That would be so nice."

Jack nodded. Bobby hadn't seen his grandparents since he was three, and that was one visit that was likely long overdue, but Jack shuddered to think what stunts Bobby might pull when confronted with his grandparents' selective hearing.

"Do you and Bobby get along, Ennis?," Jack's mother asked. She might play deaf, but she wasn't, and neither was she dumb. She knew just as much as she could get by with.

Ennis simply nodded and gave a shy "Yup."

Jack told his mother all about the house _they'd_ bought, leaving out that the down-payment had been his, since they had joint tenancy.

Jack's dad eventually shifted to the TV room to watch some "programs" he liked. If it had been any day other than Sunday, he'd be out working the herd, but Jack's parents believed in the Sabbath. They held on to their roots long after they should have, and if Jack knew anything about hanging on too long to the past, surely he'd learned it from watching them.

With John, Sr. out of the way, Jack followed his mother into the kitchen, where she was starting a pot roast for dinner, to have a discussion. Ennis sat, quiet and alone, at the dining table.

"Mom, how long do you think the two of you can keep this farm going?"

"We are doing just fine, Jack," she answered from the bowels of a cabinet, from whence she withdrew a big, black pot.

"Aren't you tired?," he asked. It was a conversation they had every time he came here, but the outcome was the same each time.

"If we were tired, we would stop. I don't plan on dying in some nursing home."

"Alright."

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you got a friend."

Jack stood staring at his mother's back while she sprinkled the roast with spices. That was probably the furthest she'd ever come to speaking plain.

When Jack didn't speak, his mother continued, "I hope you are happy. I hope you will be happy for a long time. I know you're old friends."

Jack cleared his throat and watched his shoes move on her old, stone kitchen flooring. "Than-, uh, thanks, mom. I mean it. We, um, we're really-"

"It's alright, Jack." She kept her back carefully turned as she chopped vegetables at the wooden counter. "Like I said, I hope you are happy."

"I am. I mean, we are."

She nodded, but Jack felt suddenly huge and awkward in his childhood kitchen. He wandered back to the dining room, silently collected Ennis, and together they sought the open air of outdoors to ease the suffocation of the dense, warm air of the un-air conditioned farmhouse in summer.

Somehow they wandered their way down and then up the hill towards the old horse barn.

"You will never believe what my mom just said."

"What's that?"

"That she hoped that we're happy."

"That's nice," Ennis answered.

"That's better than nice! It's a fucking miracle."

"Oh. I mean, why?"

"She pretends that she doesn't know I'm gay."

Ennis laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"Just seems like us being together is kind of so right that everyone sees past that part." Jack saw that Ennis was smiling wide.

Their feet steered naturally to the barn, and they ignored the horses nickering for their evening meals already and climbed the ladder to the hayloft. They opened the loft to the western sky without speaking, and hung their legs off of it like they were seventeen and not forty.

They sat that way for a while, until the sun began its afternoon decent into evening and the pot roast was probably getting close to ready. The entire time, Jack was thinking about literally nothing, just existing, exhausted from this trip and enjoying an escape from keeping up appearances. He couldn't say what Ennis was thinking, though, and after all this time together that was a little miracle in itself. Ennis was still so much a mystery, as much wonderment as when Jack met him, but in a different, older, wiser, less afraid package.

"God, the sunset is gorgeous," Jack breathed.

"Umm hmm," Ennis answered.

"Guess we should go in."

"Guess so. You know... Jack?"

"What's that?"

"You..." Ennis shook his head.

Jack smiled off into that sunset, and kicked Ennis's nearest dangling leg with his own. "I know. Love you too."

Ennis's eyelashes fluttered a little in the dusty gloam of the loft, and Jack felt his own pulse stutter and speed like a crazed horse's.

"The, the pot roast... they take a while," Jack whispered.

Ennis chuckled. "We're too old for that kind a thing."

"Now that's what's wrong with the world. Perfectly healthy, young people thinking they're too old for an old-fashioned roll in the hay."

Ennis laughed all out. "Get the fuck out of here, Twist, before I throw you down myself."

They left Jack's parents right after dinner, and drove back late Sunday night when the traffic wasn't too bad. Lureen invited them in for food, but they were full of pot roast and there wasn't any need. Still, even Ennis could see the loneliness in her eyes, it being an emotion he knew well. He'd have to comment later to Jack about it. When they took her son from her and left her all alone in that big house, Ennis felt a pang of guilt.

But he wasn't feeling guilty when Jack laid him out on their very own mattress and showed Ennis all those things they very probably weren't too old to have done in a hayloft. But why do them in prickly old grass when you have your own bed at home to look forward to? And after that long trip, full of joy, but heaviness and awkwardness also, Ennis had never felt more at home than he did now. He felt like every muscle in his body was relaxing, even _that one_, as he proved to Jack.

Laying in bed afterwards, watching the street lamp filter through the blinds in orange stripes, Ennis sighed. "Next time we go somewhere, maybe it should be a real vacation."

"That'd be nice," Jack answered, just before he said goodnight and they both dropped off to sleep, preparing for work in the morning and to get back to the real-life grindstone again.


	18. Chapter 18

_Early June 2007_

Ennis awoke in the black hours, when the whole world had long ago laid itself to rest. Only, sleep was a prize he could not regain, and he slipped out from beside Jack. He wasn't particularly quiet as he walked down the creaky stairs, but it didn't matter because both Jack and Bobby could sleep through anything. Ennis slipped out of the front door and sat down on the step of the threshold where he and Jack had finally brought their twenty-year war to a close.

Somewhere here, in this soil, when they'd planted that lilac bush this past spring, maybe, or with the vegetables he himself had wanted to put in to save some money, Ennis had slipped his shame into the dirt as well. It was burying itself under fruit and flowers and the things that come from a fertile land. That was okay. He didn't need them no more, anyways.

Problem was, there was some last piece of shame that blocked out the bright sun for Ennis. Until that piece fit into place, this could never really be home for him. It was a slow realization coming, but it ached more every day. He was terrified, but knew deep down he had to trust that it would be alright. Wasn't that what Jack always liked to say when they were kids? 'It's alright, Ennis. We'll be alright.' Turned out Jack was right, but it'd taken Ennis a long time to see it.

No guarantee his girls would see it, though, but Ennis could not live without them any more. He needed them back in his life. He'd pushed them away all these months while he'd been pulling Jack closer, like he could only have one and not the other. But that wasn't true, was it? Jack got them both. And why? Just 'cause he'd been brave enough to go after them both. Ennis wasn't big on that sort of bravery, but he'd come to a point where he didn't see no other choice. The war was over, but he hadn't yet invited in the peace.

"Hey there!," a voice called to him from across the street.

Ennis started at the sound, not expecting anyone to be up at this hour. The vision that met his eyes was even more startling, though. On the other side of the street was a large man probably in his sixties with a full head of gray hair watering his lawn. At about three in the morning. In nothing but his BVDs.

Ennis cast a strange look across the street but found himself at an utter loss for words or movement.

"You the new neighbor, I guess."

"Uh, yup." Ennis rose slowly to his feet, averting his gaze for the sake of politeness.

The man seemed to suddenly become aware of his state of undress and moved behind a bush. "Nice to meet you," he bellowed across the street.

Ennis nodded.

They stood in awkward silence until the man across the street suddenly dropped the hose, ran to turn it off, and disappeared inside. Ennis was left standing there, confused and caught off guard. Maybe this was how people in the suburbs acted, since this was the first time he'd lived in a suburban house.

Ennis turned and went back inside, stopping to piss before crawling back into bed.

"Ennis?" Jack's voice was muffled.

"Yup. Go back to sleep."

"Why are you up?"

"Just thinkin'."

"What about?"

Ennis shrugged in the dark, lit only by the street light, but didn't answer the question posed to him. Instead he said, "You'd never guess what I... who I just met outside."

"Who?" Jack sounded suddenly more awake.

"'Cross the street neighbor."

"Oh that's good. The man or the woman?"

"Man."

"Did you catch his name?"

"Uh, no, sorry, I didn't."

"What was he doing outside at this hour?"

"Um, water in lawn. In his underwear."

"In his... wait, _what_?"

'Seemed friendly, though."

"Uh... alright."

It was all they said for a few minutes, and Ennis assumed Jack went back to sleep, but Jack broke the silence again. "What's on your mind, Ennis?"

"Huh? Oh. The girls."

"You miss them." It wasn't a question.

"So bad." The anguish in Ennis's heart was audible in his voice.

"I know, but-"

"I know," Ennis sighed.

"You think you're ready?"

"Don't see how I can stand not being ready."

"It'll be fine, Ennis."

Ennis smiled in the dark. "Yeah, bud, I think it will."

Ennis rolled over and tried to drift off, but he felt Jack's warm breath on the back of his neck. "I got something on my mind, too."

"Yeah?" Ennis assumed Jack meant sex.

"Yeah. How come you never told me you saw your parents die?"

Ennis's breath caught in his throat. He ground out, "Jack..."

Jack gripped Ennis's strong, muscular arm from behind. "Ennis. What happened?" There was a desperate urgency to his voice.

"Nothing-"

"Don't give me that shit. I know everything about you, but you never told me that. Something happened -"

Ennis made a mumbling noise and shook his head.

"Ennis..."

"Can't we just..."

Jack lay a tender kiss on Ennis's ear. "You don't have to tell me. But you can. You always can .You didn't ever have to keep anything to yourself."

Ennis rolled further over, burying his face in the pillow, but Jack followed, half-burying Ennis under himself. "Ennis, you could always tell me anything. When was there ever a time when you couldn't?"

"Just don't want to talk about it," Ennis muttered. "Was a long time ago. Doesn't matter any more."

"If that's true, it can't hurt to tell me."

"I... Jack," Ennis sounded to his own ears like he was pleading, thought even he didn't know what he was begging for, what he wanted.

"It's alright, Ennis. We'll be alright."

As if they were the magic combination to a locker, the words released Ennis. He choked a sob into his pillow, but Jack held him tight and secure, and wouldn't think less of him, so Ennis let them come.

Only when he could talk clearly again did he try to explain, turning over to look in Jack's eye. "They died 'cause of me, Jack," Ennis whispered.

"What do you mean?" Jack was watching Ennis with wide eyes, stroking tears off his face with a shaking hand.

"They were, they were fighting. 'Bout this boy at school. I kind of liked him, you know? My mom wanted to take me to counseling over it, but my dad said it was all in everyone's imagination. It wasn't, it wasn't in their imaginations, Jack."

"I know." Jack swiped a hand across Ennis's brow.

"I just thought he was so strong and smart. Thought I just respected him, but I talked about him a lot. Didn't anyone ever call me queer until I heard my mom and dad fighting in the truck, though."

Jack sighed.

"And I... I started screaming that I wasn't, and my mom was trying to calm me down and explain how I just needed counseling, and my dad was yellin' at my mom that there wasn't anything wrong with me, and, guess that turn came out of nowhere." Ennis shook his head, eyes glazing over as if he were watching the past.

"Did you... did you see them die?," Jack asked.

"No. Guess I blacked out or something. I don't remember much except seeing us leave the road and being scared, and then waking up in the hospital. But I always knew it was my fault. 'Cause I was, 'cause I was- And they weren't wearing seat belts. But I was."

Jack simply held Ennis close. Ennis half expected to get a lecture about blaming himself or seat belts or something, anything. jack could be a little self-righteous sometimes. But instead Jack just held him tight until exhaustion took them both. Still, they clung together through sleep, both afraid of drowning without this one life raft.

Jack grimaced. "What do you think?," he asked Ennis.

As he expected, Ennis's grimace was deeper, more of a scowl.

"Oh, come on! Her parents are going to be there!"

"Bobby, that's not the point. We haven't even met her. Don't you think it's a little early to be going on a family vacation?"

"Noooo. I mean, we're really serious."

"'S what I'm worried about," grumbled Ennis.

"He isn't going to do anything stupid," answered Jack.

"Yeah," Bobby echoed Jack's sentiment, "I'm not stupid."

"I don't know, Bob. It just seems... soon. and like I said, we haven't even met her."

"Well, what if you did meet her?"

Ennis seemed to have bowed out of the argument for now. When Jack looked askance his way, Ennis was staring at his hand, minding his own business.

Jack sighed. "Yeah, alright. How about we meet her, and then I'll think about it."

"Well, don't think about it too long. The trip's in three weeks. I have to plan and pack and stuff."

"Jesus, it's just Ocean City," Jack muttered. "Plan what?"

"I dunno."

"Alright, how about you bring her over for dinner?"

"Kelly, this is my dad, Jack."

"Hey," she nodded.

"And this is Ennis. His, uh, partner." It was the first time Jack had ever heard Bobby voice Jack's relationship with Ennis, and Jack felt a stab of pride and elation at the word, wishing he could record that moment and play it over again.

"Hey there," Ennis shook her hand.

Well, it was unlikely that Bobby was just into Kelly for her looks, anyway, though she was a nice-looking girl. But she was about five-foot-three and plenty chubby. Ennis'd seen her before, but failed to mention that she was African American, or sharp as a fucking tack. She had a disarming smile and a heard of curly hair, and wanted to be a screenwriter. Five minutes into meeting her, Jack sensed she'd be a good one, too. She seemed to be watching him like her eyes looked right through him, like she was absorbing his character.

They settled down for a simple dinner, and Jack steered the conversation towards Ocean City. Turned out Kelly's mom was a lawyer and her father was in finance, so they had a good amount of money. She had one brother a couple years younger than her, J.J. Her parents owned a condo in the Sea Watch and the four of them always went out there for a week each summer, and this time they were inviting Bobby. Pretty innocent, sounded like. The place had two bedrooms, so Kelly and Bobby would be sharing one, but it was twin beds, and Kelly's parents had already said they had to keep the door open.

"So what do you kids plan to do down there?," Jack asked.

"I want to swim," Bobby answered.

Kelly laughed and nodded. "We mostly lay on the beach. Mini-golf. Boardwalk. Maybe go down to Assateague."

"That place is so boring," Bobby offered.

"Not all of us are bored by nature," Kelly quipped.

"Always wanted to see that," Ennis chimed in for the first time.

"Oh you should. It's so neat."

Ennis nodded. "Wanted to go down there for the pony round-up."

"Are you a horse person?," Kelly asked.

"Dad and Ennis both are, sort of," Bobby supplied. "They grew up on farms."

Jack shrugged. "Oh, I can ride whatever you give me, but Ennis, here, for him it's an art."

Ennis blushed and looked down. "Haven't done it in a real long time."

"Oh! Well, my uncle owns a stable up in Howard County. I take riding lessons up there. Maybe sometime we can all go riding." Kelly nodded with enthusiasm

It was clear to Jack that Kelly had just won Ennis's heart, at least.

Bobby, however, looked a little less enthusiastic. "I've never been..."

Jack laughed. "About time you learn some new tricks."

"It'll be fun!" Clearly Kelly was not planning to take no for an answer.

Ennis stood to gather up their plates. "We got a chocolate cake over here. Any interest?" _Everyone_ answered with hearty replies, but after that, Kelly and Bobby skipped off to a movie, and Ennis and Jack retired to the back yard with beers to enjoy the brightness of the summer evening.

Jack sighed and slipped back into his chair.

Ennis started talking about getting a grill so they could cook outside.

Jack nodded idly and watched Ennis out of the corner of his eye.

"Having someone over for dinner was kind of nice. Maybe if we had a grill we could do it more. Like maybe Lureen."

Jack smiled.

"Or I think you got some friends in the city? I never met them. Should ask them out here. And that neighbor."

"The underwear one?"

Ennis smirked. "The one with the kids and the dogs."

Jack laughed. "We ought to invite the underwear one, too. See what he looks like with clothes on."

Ennis's eyes sparkled with a smile in the now-failing light.

"I'd like that Ennis. But you don't gotta do it for me."

"Didn't suggest it for you. You always gotta think everything's about you."

Jack laughed.

"And my girls. They always did like a good cookout."

Jack watched Ennis carefully for a minute before rising to his feet. "Alright, let's do it."

"Huh?" Ennis looked up at him.

Jack checked his watch. "Lowes should still be open. Let's go pick out a grill."

"I was just thinking out loud, Jack. They're expensive, and we probably wouldn't cook on it much."

"I don't give a shit. Get up. We'll take the truck."

"Jack..."

"We aren't daydreaming anymore, Ennis. We're doing. Come on. A grill, we can afford."

Ennis groaned.

"Well fine then, I'll get one without you." Jack turned towards the door.

Ennis cursed. "I'm guessing you don't know anything about grills, Jack!"

"Then live with a crappy one or come with me," Jack called back over his shoulder.

Ennis cursed one more time before he followed Jack inside and right back on out the front door to head to Lowes.

Bobby threw his legs up over the arm of the recliner and flipped the channel spasmodically.

"Wait, was that The Deadliest Catch?," Jack asked.

Bobby shrugged and kept flipping.

"Don't you have any homework?," Ennis asked, sitting down next to Jack on the sofa with a glass of soda.

"Already did it," Bobby answered without looking up. He stopped on some show Ennis didn't know.

Ennis was exhausted after what'd been a hard day at work. Every muscle of his hurt. He groaned deep as he sunk into the cushions.

"You alright?," Jack muttered.

"Yeah, just tired."

"Mmmh." Jack reached up a hand and draped his arm around Ennis's shoulder. Ennis leaned against the comforting warmth without thinking about it. Only after he'd been leaning on Jack in that way long enough for a commercial to happen and Bobby to turn to ask Jack a question did it occur to Ennis that he'd never made such a free and easy display of affection with Jack in front of Bobby.

Bobby noticed. "Dad, were there, uh... any messages for me on the answering machine?"

But it was Ennis who'd checked the machine. His instinct was screaming to move away from Jack, but Jack's hand on his shoulder was firm, letting him know how such an action would be taken. Even so, he didn't need Jack's say-so. Ennis saw that Bobby was old enough to know how this thing went between Ennis and his father. "You did get a message from Kelly," Ennis answered. "Said to call you."

Bobby nodded. "Thanks." His show came back on and he turned towards the screen.

That night, as Ennis lay once again in his and Jack's bed, he thought of the step he'd taken with Bobby tonight. It'd been so simple, as simple as not moving when he was someplace he wanted to be where he'd been welcomed in warm, safe arms when he was tired. Maybe that's how things could be with his girls- just not moving when he was where he was, and maybe they could rise to the challenge, like Bobby had. They'd grown up in a different time and place than Ennis, and maybe, just maybe, it was time he had a little faith in them.


	19. Epilogue

_Late June 2007_

Jack's dress shoes echoed on the linoleum of the front hallway as he flicked a light switch and peeled out of his suit jacket. Ennis and Bobby flooded through the door just behind him, and Bobby threw his own suit jacket over the chair closest to the door, a poor chair whose role in life had shifted from holding asses to holding any and all of Bobby's things.

"Well, I am beat," Jack announced to no one in particular as he headed for the kitchen and flipped on the light there as well. The clock over the stove read 12:53. "Thank you both for a wonderful birthday present."

"You're welcome," Bobby mumbled just before he- quite suddenly- waved goodnight and disappeared upstairs to his room.

Jack was still standing there in some sort of shock that he couldn't even get a proper goodnight from his son on his _birthday_ when Ennis interrupted Jack's thoughts with words. "Hope you liked it..."

"Course I did. Though I worried you were miserable," Jack smiled.

Ennis cracked a little grin as well.

"Never thought I'd see you going to the orchestra."

Ducking his head, Ennis moved his chin in a slightly negative gesture before he answered, "You got me to do all sorts of things I'd rather not."

"Rather not, huh?" Jack laughed.

Crimson flushed up into Ennis's face. Without more talking, they worked in concert, turning down the thermostat (or up, as Ennis called it when the air conditioner was on), turning off lights and locking doors. Jack followed Ennis up stairs already creaking with age in this relatively young home. Ennis went straight to the bedroom, but Jack was drawn and distracted by the glow coming in from under Bobby's door. He sneaked over to Bobby's room to keep the floor from squeaking and knocked softly.

"Yeah?" Bobby did not sound pleased.

The door was open just a hair, so Jack pushed it open a couple more inches to see Bobby sitting on his plaid comforter cradling a phone in his hand.

"You going to bed soom?" Jack asked it in that parental way that made it known that it was not a question.

"Yeah, I will, ok?"

"Fine, goodnight." Even as Jack spoke those last words, Bobby was talking into the phone again. He closed the door tightly behind him and went into his and Ennis's bedroom.

Ennis was sitting on the bed, still not changed out of his suit. His hands were on his knees and his face looked peaceful, eyes nearly closed. Jack closed the door tightly, already feeling his own erection from just knowing that he and Ennis had the same plan. Jack walked up to Ennis and made him stand so Jack could wrap his hands around Ennis, feeling the soft, cool cotton suit shirt. Ennis wasn't wearing cologne, but he hoped Ennis could smell his. Judging by the way Ennis's nose was climbing into Jack's starched collar, he would guess so.

Ennis was the first to move towards undressing, undoing Jack's gray checkered tie with haste before opening the top couple buttons of the shirt, pulling the shirt out of the pants of Jack's gray pinstripe suit. And suddenly, Jack was reminded...

_Ennis had gone with Alma. No one could forget that, least of all Jack, because at that point everyone was sure they were going to marry. They hadn't been dating that long, Ennis and Alma, but Alma'd really come out of a feud Jack and Ennis were wrestling with: Jack was determined to go to college and hopefully far away, whereas Ennis was dead set on staying right where he was and learning some trade. Jack thought Ennis wasn't seeing the big picture. Ennis thought Jack was being selfish and snobbish. Either way, it was a demilitarized zone that neither ventured into if it could be helped, a topic on which they never spoke. But Ennis, with venom, had once announced that if Jack went to college, he was going to find some nice gal, settle down with her, and make a life out here in Frederick, or somewhere._

Jack'd answered something like, "Do whatever the fuck you want."

Ennis'd heard. Not long after, he'd started in on Alma. Every time Jack saw her, he really only saw Ennis's message to him, a passive aggressive attempt to use jealousy to keep Jack from attaining his dreams. Jack saw it as juvenile and petty, a childish reaction to an adult situation, and it drove a wedge between them.

To Ennis, it was simply common sense.

So of course Ennis had taken Alma to the prom. Alma'd been wearing something white and tight to her body, strapless if Jack was remembering right, with a couple big puffs where it ended just above the knee. What Jack had remembered most was that it was white, like a wedding dress, and ever since then he'd imagined Alma in that dress on the day she'd married Ennis. He was sure she'd had a proper dress, or something, but in his head... Maybe it was why he remembered the dress so well.

Ennis had been in a simple black and white rented tux. No way to forget that, either.

Jack's tux had been silverish-blue with a matching bow tie. What in the world had he been thinking? Coattails, also- he remembered it had blue coattails. And a darker silverish-blue vest, Jesus. He went with Shannon, about whom he remembered almost nothing. She'd had short brown hair, her dress had had long sleeves and was all black until it got below her knees and then it became a mess of exploding white fabric. He'd managed to get her a black corsage, and that hadn't been easy. And that was all he remembered of Shannon, except that she'd been in choir, hadn't she? He wasn't sure.

Jack also could not remember much about the dance. He knew the food, the drink, the music, the decorations- all of it had been crappy in his mind. He'd been in a bad mood and he'd sat and watched Ennis and Alma slow dance one too many times before he'd gotten the nerve to pull Shannon out on the _floor for a slow dance. Even then, somehow he and Ennis had danced with their women without their women. As the dance floor moved underneath them, they locked eyes every chance they got. Jack could read unhappiness in Ennis's eyes, and it was all the apology he'd needed for this mess with Alma._

When the song was done, Jack and Shannon sat back down. Luckily for Jack's foul mood, Shannon didn't care much for dancing. Jack looked up to see Ennis leading Alma off the dance floor and fuck him if Ennis didn't lead Alma right over to their table to sit across from himself and Shannon. There were no introductions to give, their school being small enough that everyone knew everyone else, but there was still a moment of uncomfortable silence before Alma jumped in with some ready conversation. It was probably Shannon who kept it going with her. Eventually Jack and Ennis excused themselves for a smoke outside.

They never did come back to the dance.

Jack groaned as he felt Ennis putting cool hands across his chest. He worked at Ennis's red tie with lust-clumsy fingers, but had recovered by the time he got to the buttons. He took off Ennis's dress shirt quickly, because he did so like the sight of Ennis in a wife beater, strong shoulder muscles pronounced, a little chest hair peeking out.

_Jack drove Shannon to the prom in his mother's car, and yeah, he must have been a selfish asshole SOB because he and Ennis did hop in the car and drive up into the woods where no one would expect them before clambering into the back seat. Ennis didn't require any convincing or cajoling. In fact, as soon as they'd got outside to smoke, Jack had lit up a cigarette, but Ennis had taken out a pack- another clearly stolen from his sister- and slammed it back into his tux pocket. Low, in that voice he was sure no one had heard but him, Ennis said without turning to him, "That, uh, tux brings out your eyes."_

Jack paused mid inhalation and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth to stare at the side of Ennis's head in shock. "Well, thank you. I hadn't planned on saying anything, but I didn't see anything finer in that whole damn room than you in a tux. Looks like it was made for you, you know." Jack flicked ash onto the ground as he watched Ennis do his duck-and-blush, and then continued. "Makes you look real respectable, James Bond or Harrison Ford or something. You ever think you look like Harrison Ford? Or maybe Han Solo," Jack chuckled.

"Now you're just being a dumbass," Ennis muttered.

Jack laughed, "I'm like the Chewie to your Han Solo."

"Yeah?" Ennis looked over at Jack.

"Yeah," Jack grinned, already backing towards the parking lot so he could see Ennis as he did it. "Maybe I'll grow a mustache or something so I'll look the part!" The sentence echoed in the warm spring air.

_Ennis didn't move, instead yelling out, "How do you know you aren't Princess Leia?" He was smiling wide._

"Why don't you come over here and I'll show you!"

And that was how they'd come to be a good fifteen miles out of town on a back road in the back seat of the blue Chevy. And Ennis, for his part, was showing all his desire and apologizing with his hands as he tore into Jack's tux, though he left the dress shirt on, even after he'd loosened Jack's pants. Ennis slid down and pulled Jack's dick into his mouth- so awkward in the car, Jack realized as he heard Ennis's shoe make contact with a window- and his hands went back up to wrap around Jack's ribs, gripping the dress shirt tight. Jack's pants weren't off, just around his knees. His body and pants had a war as movements driven by desire were constrained by silverish-blue polyester.

"Shiiiit", Jack moaned as he pulled himself up using his elbows on the door handle and armrest area. Ennis pulled back and looked up at him, his eyes and not his dick. "Fuck, Ennis," Jack hissed as he reached to undo Ennis's dress pants. He took off Ennis's black jacket, noticing it had a sheen to it, marking it as higher quality than his own rental, despite the fact that he had more money. He pulled on the black bow tie and found that it was real, wondering where Ennis had learned to tie something like that. The black vest came off next, and Ennis just watched him, breathless. They were both beginning to sweat by now.

"Supposed to lose your virginity on prom night," Jack whispered, out of breath but not from exercise, as he helped Ennis remove his shoes and carefully work his legs out of the expensive pants.

"Ship's sailed on that one," Ennis smiled reluctantly

"Yeah," Jack grinned at Ennis for a long moment before moving in for a kiss, stroking a tender tongue over Ennis's before Ennis- one pant leg still around a knee- pulled Jack in hard and determined and made it a kiss to remember.

"Bet Alma's a virgin," Jack gasped when they broke the kiss.

"Maybe Shannon'll fuck her," Ennis said, and Jack actually couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. Not that he thought Ennis meant it, but it was either a joke or something said out of anger, or perhaps both. Jack didn't care. He pushed Ennis back more fully onto the seat, pinning his shoulders, forgetting the last pant leg, in order to finish taking off his shirt. Ennis writhed and bucked to pull his underwear off the one leg at least, and Jack reared up to look in amazement at Ennis, naked except for a white sleeveless T-shirt, and sporting a fucking bruiser of an erection. Damn. Jack didn't even know where to turn first, almost feeling like he could get off from just looking at Ennis.

But Ennis knew what he wanted, anyway, and Jack found them both on their knees, dicks together, rubbing hard and bucking into each other, curse words flying in a whispered, sexual way. They both bucked too hard and ended up sprawled half across the back seat, half into the space behind the driver's seat, both on their sides. Jack felt blood rushing to his head in a torrent. he could see Ennis's face turning as red as both of their dicks as they rhythmically drummed into each other, both hands around both cocks, like dorking around but with Ennis, and that made it about a million times better. As the tension grew, though, their rhythm became more frantic until was lost altogether, and one came, then the other right after, and it was hard to even tell who was first since they were both wet and they were both red hanging upside-down, and, soon, they were both giggling. Laughter came like an early _spring in Ennis's eyes- unexpected but always beautiful and welcomed- and Jack could not imagine ever losing this man to Alma or the world._

Ennis was in charge this time, and he opened Jack's pants fly, moving around, not graceful but who the hell cares when you've got a man in your pants trying to free your dick? Eventually Ennis had worked it out of Jack's underwear and zipper so that it jutted out of the fine gray pinstripe like a paradox, making Jack both naked and dressed. Ennis smiled down on it like it was his own private secret while Jack watched Ennis in amazement. Every time this lustful man, eager and more free than half the partners Jack had had, unfolded from within a quiet high school janitor, Jack felt like his up was tilting down. He felt his blood rush to his head.

Jack pushed Ennis back onto the bed, kneeling over him. Jack started speaking, saying something, but even he wasn't sure what he was saying, something teasing and stupid. "You get me a birthday present?"

"You already unwrapped it."

"Must be some mistaken then, 'cause you've still got pants on."

Ennis cracked a little smile and pulled Jack down on top of him, chest-to-chest, for a kiss. Jack broke away to speak, "No, I'm being serious." He said it in a stern voice and immediately got to work on Ennis's pants, having to start with the shoes so he could pull down the pant legs. Meanwhile, Ennis had twisted around to try and do the same until they were a big awkward mess and Jack started laughing.

"Whut?" Ennis didn't sound amused.

"We aren't eighteen any more. Would you just stop squirming so I can get your pants off."

"Alright." Ennis sounded disappointed as he slumped back onto the bed, but the iron tent in his underwear didn't look at all disappointed, so Jack took them off too. He held himself up by the arms to peer down at Ennis, naked except for the wife beater, and sporting a strong erection that could easily say happy birthday to Jack about twelve ways he could think of. Damn. Jack didn't even know where to turn first, almost feeling like he could get off from just looking at Ennis, imagining all the things they could do without needing to do them at all.

But Ennis did not feel the same way, because he moved quickly and with all his strength when he suddenly flipped Jack onto his back. The whole bed bounced from the impact. Ennis was staring down like he had a demon in his eyes, a lust that seemed to border on dangerous, and Jack loved it because he knew it wasn't dangerous, not in the least, just unleashed and a little wild, though it listened to his voice.

"Let's do it that way we did after prom," Jack whispered. He saw a shadow of something unhappy pass over Ennis's face and he wondered if he shouldn't bring up those old times. Maybe Alma had given him an earful sometime down the years about his abandoning her at the dance. No doubt Ennis had made up some fine lie about that. But the shadow passed quickly, to be replaced by a shy smile, and a hand on Jack's dick, just where he'd wanted it to be. He added his own hand to the rhythm so that they were both there in all ways: two hands, two dicks. Ennis didn't make much noise while he pumped, more of a heavy breathing, whereas Jack was a grunter and always had been. They were both strong and neither small so the bed was bouncing, creaking, and swaying like a ride at the fair- Jack remembered that fine time, too- as their rhythm once again broke up into something more frantic, the need to find friction and skin and-

Jack groaned like he'd been stabbed when he came. Ennis let out a low, deep moan, quiet like the sound of heat lightning. Jack rolled off where he found himself laying mostly on top of Ennis, rolled off until he was only half on top of Ennis, anyway. "Man, that wiped me out. I am certainly not eighteen any more."

"Wiped you out when you were eighteen, too."

Jack and Ennis were both laying with their heads hanging over the side of the bed that faced the window. Jack wasn't quiet sure how they'd gotten there, but he turnrd to face Ennis, face red, blond-gray hair hanging from his head like a teenager with his hair all gelled up or something. Jack started to laugh at the thought. Maybe Ennis would like to be one of those punk kids, a purple mohawk or something. Ennis laughed back, and they hung there a while. Jack would have liked to fall asleep that way- well, not with his head hanging, but naked (except he wasn't naked, Ennis had never taken his pants down, and his finest suit pants weren't fit for public just now), or in bed, anyway, with Ennis- but he heard noise coming from the hallway, so he sighed, hauled himself out of bed, and changed into his pajama bottoms.

The hallway was dark when he stepped out into it, but it was lit by a sliver of gold still shooting out from under Bobby's door. Jack didn't knock this time, the door not closed all the way, and was greeted by the sight of Bobby still on the phone, laying back on his bed and staring at the ceiling. Seemed he and whoever he was on with were discussing sex, talking about who was their first time (news to Jack that Bobby had a first time, but he should have guessed), and no one could have missed Bobby's hand down his pants as he spoke, moving on himself even while he managed to keep the quaver out of his voice.

"Bobby!"

"Dad!" That hand shot out of those pants in a hurry, and he dropped the phone.

"I told you to get off the phone."

"But Dad, it's Kelly!"

"I hope so. Now, off the phone."

Bobby muttered a couple goodbyes and dropped the phone to his bed morosely. For a moment Bobby and Jack stood facing each other, Jack in Bobby's doorway.

"Well, goodnight," Jack said, turning to leave.

"Night," Bobby sighed. Jack didn't miss the sound of the door locking after it closed. He smiled to himself, remembering his mother catching him-

Ennis was already asleep in bed, curled on his side and sleeping _on top of_ most of the blankets Jack wanted to be under. Jack sighed, brushed his teeth and pissed, and climbed into bed next to Ennis. The birthday he'd had at Ed's, Ed had thrown him a party, their friends (though he had to admit now they were really Ed's friends) came over, the food was catered, even. Why, Jack didn't know, but at the time he thought he must be the luckiest guy around that so many people cared about him so much to come to his party. Now he wondered whether they cared about him at all, since he hadn't spoken to them in months, or maybe they only cared about the party.

It was quality, not quantity, that counted. This year, he really was quite certain, he'd finally hit the "luckiest guy" jackpot on the head. He went to sleep, but he didn't care much about dreams, because anything he could dream of wanting, he had. Well, except maybe the mortgage paid in full... and that hybrid car so they could save on gas... and money for Bobby's college wherever he decided to go. New carpets. Jack groaned and rolled over until his face was smothered by pillow. No life is perfect, but he guessed it could be worse.


End file.
